Pay for coaches, respect for assistant coaches, and the club scene- here we go....
I will really be preaching to the choir on pay for coaches. People who coach generally do it because of their love of a sport, or sports; and because of their desire to help young people. The vast majority of these people do not get compensated fairly for their efforts on behalf of society, and many do not receive any financial renumeration at all, but are simply called "volunteers". The two major reasons for coaching transiency are lack of institutional support- administrators- and poor pay. Any head coach at a high school who is also a teacher will tell you that doing both is like having two full time jobs. The schools pay you a "stipend" that starts with the first day of regular practice and ends with the last game of the regular season. If that is all the work the coach is putting in to his/her sport, then they are not going to be successful. Coaching has become a year-round endeavor. Coaching contracts include language that says someone can be let go without cause, so when you are two or three athletic directors or principals down the road from the ones who hired you, that is some very thin ice you are walking on. Here's an example- when I was hired at Mountain Pointe in 1997 by Harold Slemmer, the other people in the room with him were the District Athletic Director and the school's AD. At that moment Harold promised me the three things that it would take to have a top program- and pay wasn't one of them. He would give me a basketball PE class, would get my assistant coaches jobs on campus, and make the gyms available to our program in the summers for camps, clinics, and leagues. The District AD nodded his approval, which was instrumental in me accepting the job, even though I was actually going to take a $12,000 a year pay cut to leave the Phoenix Union High School District. Being penalized for jumping districts is another detriment to coaching longevity, but that's different story. That's how important those promises from Harold and the District AD were to me. Harold left for the AIA two years later, and within two years after that, all three of the things he had promised were taken away. I appealed all the way up to the Superintendent to have the district abide by Harold's promises. They said Harold's promises left with Harold. Now can you understand why coaches bounce around?
Assistant coaches get almost no respect from administrations, get very low pay, and in most cases volunteer all their time. If they don't have or get a job on campus, it is almost impossible to retain them for any length of time. Their status on the staff is even more tenuous than the head coach, because an administrator can have you get rid of them at any moment- without so much as a hearing. A parent complaint is usually the nexus. I had one AD at Camelback call me in and tell me to let one of my assistants go, because he wanted to replace him with a friend of his. He talked to me like it was no big deal to tell my coach he was out. I resisted and he backed down, but you can see the regard that administrators have for assistants in many cases. Junior colleges aren't any better when it comes to assistant pay and esteem. At MCC, I had $4700 to spend on assistant coaches. How can you get anyone to stay for $4700 a year? If you have multiple assistants, they expect you to split the $4700 accordingly. They need a job on campus. One of my first assistants there was Mike Grothaus. We all know what an outstanding coach he is. I went to a VP at Mesa and told her that Mike would take over for me when I moved on and he would nail that job for the next thirty years with great success. He was someone you just couldn't let get away, but he needed a job on campus. She basically told me that he "was just a coach" and dismissed my whole argument. He left and won a state championship at Basha. How is MCC doing?
As for club ball, I can't believe I am going to say this, but it is the inevitable future of basketball. I tried to fight the culture, but in the end, it is like a terminal disease- it wins. I played basketball in Europe in the 70's and the club system was how sports was done. There was no interscholastic athletics. I didn't think I would ever see it take hold here, but it has and it is the future. The genie is out of the bottle. The club system in Europe brought about the end of "amateur" athletics in the Olympics. Transfer portals and NILs are integral parts of the club system and have now begun to take over colleges and, soon, high schools. The difference between the haves and have-nots in college and high school will eventually become so egregious that schools will begin to abandon interscholastic athletics, because paying athletes is just not their mission, just like the Euros have. Prep schools will be the mark for serious athletes and the rest will feature intramurals. Right now, the best coaches aren't there, but someday they will be, and they will be compensated accordingly, as will their staff. Look around you- there are European players gaining a lot of traction in American sports, as well as European coaches. Their club systems are set up for it.
As a side note, I just came back from Michigan, where I had the opportunity to watch Michigan State men's basketball practice. I sat next to a high school coach from a school in Michigan, who was taking copious notes for about the first 15 minutes of the practice. He quietly closed his notebook and slumped back in his seat and I put my hand on his shoulder and said "yeah, I get it. We just don't have anything in common with this, do we?" The Spartans had superior athletes at every position, had at least fifteen managers, cameras all over the gym that could film each individual player, basketballs with computer chips in them to jive with the chips in each player's shoes to do live stats, and a huge video screen where those live stats were instantaneously seen by the coaches- of whom there were six assistants, all full time employees of the university. These will be the last bastion schools for interscholastic sports and they are right now grouping up into "super-conferences", to the detriment of smaller universities. Down the road, they will be the last to give way to the inevitable.
See you soon...
I will really be preaching to the choir on pay for coaches. People who coach generally do it because of their love of a sport, or sports; and because of their desire to help young people. The vast majority of these people do not get compensated fairly for their efforts on behalf of society, and many do not receive any financial renumeration at all, but are simply called "volunteers". The two major reasons for coaching transiency are lack of institutional support- administrators- and poor pay. Any head coach at a high school who is also a teacher will tell you that doing both is like having two full time jobs. The schools pay you a "stipend" that starts with the first day of regular practice and ends with the last game of the regular season. If that is all the work the coach is putting in to his/her sport, then they are not going to be successful. Coaching has become a year-round endeavor. Coaching contracts include language that says someone can be let go without cause, so when you are two or three athletic directors or principals down the road from the ones who hired you, that is some very thin ice you are walking on. Here's an example- when I was hired at Mountain Pointe in 1997 by Harold Slemmer, the other people in the room with him were the District Athletic Director and the school's AD. At that moment Harold promised me the three things that it would take to have a top program- and pay wasn't one of them. He would give me a basketball PE class, would get my assistant coaches jobs on campus, and make the gyms available to our program in the summers for camps, clinics, and leagues. The District AD nodded his approval, which was instrumental in me accepting the job, even though I was actually going to take a $12,000 a year pay cut to leave the Phoenix Union High School District. Being penalized for jumping districts is another detriment to coaching longevity, but that's different story. That's how important those promises from Harold and the District AD were to me. Harold left for the AIA two years later, and within two years after that, all three of the things he had promised were taken away. I appealed all the way up to the Superintendent to have the district abide by Harold's promises. They said Harold's promises left with Harold. Now can you understand why coaches bounce around?
Assistant coaches get almost no respect from administrations, get very low pay, and in most cases volunteer all their time. If they don't have or get a job on campus, it is almost impossible to retain them for any length of time. Their status on the staff is even more tenuous than the head coach, because an administrator can have you get rid of them at any moment- without so much as a hearing. A parent complaint is usually the nexus. I had one AD at Camelback call me in and tell me to let one of my assistants go, because he wanted to replace him with a friend of his. He talked to me like it was no big deal to tell my coach he was out. I resisted and he backed down, but you can see the regard that administrators have for assistants in many cases. Junior colleges aren't any better when it comes to assistant pay and esteem. At MCC, I had $4700 to spend on assistant coaches. How can you get anyone to stay for $4700 a year? If you have multiple assistants, they expect you to split the $4700 accordingly. They need a job on campus. One of my first assistants there was Mike Grothaus. We all know what an outstanding coach he is. I went to a VP at Mesa and told her that Mike would take over for me when I moved on and he would nail that job for the next thirty years with great success. He was someone you just couldn't let get away, but he needed a job on campus. She basically told me that he "was just a coach" and dismissed my whole argument. He left and won a state championship at Basha. How is MCC doing?
As for club ball, I can't believe I am going to say this, but it is the inevitable future of basketball. I tried to fight the culture, but in the end, it is like a terminal disease- it wins. I played basketball in Europe in the 70's and the club system was how sports was done. There was no interscholastic athletics. I didn't think I would ever see it take hold here, but it has and it is the future. The genie is out of the bottle. The club system in Europe brought about the end of "amateur" athletics in the Olympics. Transfer portals and NILs are integral parts of the club system and have now begun to take over colleges and, soon, high schools. The difference between the haves and have-nots in college and high school will eventually become so egregious that schools will begin to abandon interscholastic athletics, because paying athletes is just not their mission, just like the Euros have. Prep schools will be the mark for serious athletes and the rest will feature intramurals. Right now, the best coaches aren't there, but someday they will be, and they will be compensated accordingly, as will their staff. Look around you- there are European players gaining a lot of traction in American sports, as well as European coaches. Their club systems are set up for it.
As a side note, I just came back from Michigan, where I had the opportunity to watch Michigan State men's basketball practice. I sat next to a high school coach from a school in Michigan, who was taking copious notes for about the first 15 minutes of the practice. He quietly closed his notebook and slumped back in his seat and I put my hand on his shoulder and said "yeah, I get it. We just don't have anything in common with this, do we?" The Spartans had superior athletes at every position, had at least fifteen managers, cameras all over the gym that could film each individual player, basketballs with computer chips in them to jive with the chips in each player's shoes to do live stats, and a huge video screen where those live stats were instantaneously seen by the coaches- of whom there were six assistants, all full time employees of the university. These will be the last bastion schools for interscholastic sports and they are right now grouping up into "super-conferences", to the detriment of smaller universities. Down the road, they will be the last to give way to the inevitable.
See you soon...
