According to an ESPN report, Texas Longhorns head coach Tom Herman is not among those taking a pay cut during the pandemic.
There have been plenty of coaches during the COVID-19 pandemic that have taken pay cuts as schools adjust their payrolls. Some schools have reduced salaries, announced furloughs or outright laid off staff members. However, Texas head football coach Tom Herman is not among them according to a report from ESPN.
According to the ESPN staff, 75 schools were contacted about their payrolls. A Texas spokesman stated that “they are still considering options as they finalize the budget.”
Coaches who have taken a reduction:
Bill Self, Kansas
Mike Krzyzewski, Duke
Tom Izzo, Michigan State
Lincoln Riley, Oklahoma
Jim Harbaugh, Michigan
Five of the Big 12 schools have taken cuts while three have not. Two other Big 12 schools refused to answer on whether or not there will be cuts made. Herman is set to make his $6.8 million salary if no changes are made to the budget. Most schools are taking a 10 percent reduction that would essentially drop Herman down to $6.12 million. If the college football season is cancelled as many think, Herman likely will have a pay cut with no revenue being generated from football.
Colleges are bracing for huge losses from declining enrollment due to the pandemic. At the same time, athletic departments are facing dramatic losses of their own, starting with the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament in March. A year ago, schools split a pool of $600 million; this year, they were told to expect barely a third of that. With larger uncertainty ahead — namely whether there will be football this fall — athletic directors are looking for ways to save money, including the elimination of some sports.
St. Edward’s head men’s golf coach will move to high school golf at Georgetown High School after school’s fundraising efforts fell short.
Chris Hill, head golf coach at St. Edward’s University since June 2018, has spent the past few weeks rallying all the support he could in an attempt to save the Hilltoppers’ golf program from budget cuts. Ultimately, the number was just too big. As the golf programs shutter at the NCAA Division II school in Austin, Hill is moving on but not moving far.
Hill has coached at every level of college golf. After stints at Division I, II and III schools, he’s taking on a new challenge in high school golf. Hill has accepted a position as the head men’s and women’s golf coach at Georgetown (Texas) High School just north of Austin, which competes at the Class 5A level.
“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Hill said. “I might be a trendsetter.”
The St. Edward’s men’s and women’s golf teams were among six programs slated for elimination, the university revealed on April 15. Hill and head women’s coach Jennifer McNeil – who has been the only coach in the 16-year history of the women’s program – lobbied for the opportunity to save their teams through fundraising.
The university — a private school with a student population of 3,680 undergraduates — agreed, but set a steep goal. The coaches were asked to come up with pledges totaling more than $2 million per sport by the end of May to ensure the programs will be reinstated for five years.
Hill said he and McNeil “made up significant ground” on that number but ultimately couldn’t reach it. He remains in contact with his players and will continue to help the men who are looking to pursue their college golf careers at other schools.
As for Hill, his transition into high school athletics brings his coaching life full circle. His father spent more than 30 years as a high school basketball coach, turning down an opportunity to coach at the college level because he wanted to be a dad.
“I think this transition is at a perfect time for my family,” Hill said. “My boys are almost 5 and almost 7 and they’re playing golf and playing hockey. I think there’s a bigger plan going on for me that I’m meant to be at Georgetown and help really mold and impact all these golfers.”
Hill will coach both the men’s and women’s teams at Georgetown. He’ll enter a teaching certification program, too. In Texas, high school golf is played year-round.
Hill brings big experience to a high school team looking to grow.
“It’s a true blessing that all this worked out the way it did.”
Men’s college golf was among three athletic programs cut at the University of Akron, and it will have an affect on coach and players.
Two days after Kaleb Smith learned his Akron men’s golf team was being eliminated, the part that still didn’t register was that all the guys wouldn’t be in the same place next year.
“It hasn’t sunk in as far as a teammate perspective,” Smith said, a redshirt junior. “I’m thinking they’re all going to be in Akron but no, they’re all going to be separated.”
At Akron, men’s golf was one of three sports that fell victim to budget cuts. Head coach David Trainor was informed over the phone early in the day on Thursday, May 14. Minutes later, he had to get on a team Zoom call to let his players know.
“It was awful,” Trainor said. “Thursday was a day of a lot of tears, and it went all day long.”
The bigger picture in all the uncertainty that NCAA athletics now faces is one of displacement. In Akron, it’s a team broken up, a committed coach left jobless and a graduate left in limbo. Smith felt the blow two times. In addition to his program being gone, a career opportunity evaporated, too.
Smith, a marketing major from Mansfield, Ohio, had a pending offer that was frozen when the company had to make staff cuts and other reductions in light of the coronavirus.
“It was a lesson learned, for lack of better terms, don’t ever put all your eggs in one basket,” he said. The job search resumes for the fresh graduate.
Trainor was once told by a coaching mentor to only recruit players you’d want as a neighbor – players who will represent you with class and integrity. Trainor is finding now that it’s easy to go to battle for those kinds of men. Smith, for example, asked Trainor for a letter of recommendation, and the words poured onto the page.
“It was just an easy thing to write,” Trainor said.
All six Akron underclassmen will potentially hit what’s already a loaded transfer portal, and Trainor had some specific instructions for that: Cast a wide net, find a spot where you can actually play and a place that aligns with your needs academically. Produce a list, Trainor told his players, and “I’ll call anyone, anywhere for you.”
Smith and his roommate Mitchell McFarland wonder sometimes if their names will come up if and when Akron ever reboots the program. If they do, hopefully the stories told do these big personalities justice. Smith was the guy most likely to make you laugh in the pre-round driving range huddle. He had a knack for that.
In the team photo that circulated with news of Akron’s program being cut, the whole team is wearing golf shoes but Smith, who appears in house slippers. McFarland is quick to point that out.
A team photo of Akron men’s golf. (@ZipsMGolf Twitter)
“We always said we just were too serious,” McFarland said on the importance of Smith’s comedic relief, “and that’s maybe one of the reasons we don’t play up to how we feel like we should.”
McFarland said Smith took it upon himself to keep the atmosphere from ever getting too stuffy. Not even Smith’s presence could cut the somber mood of last week’s call about Akron’s program being eliminated, though.
“You don’t really realize the gravity of the situation when it’s happening in real time,” McFarland said. “As time has gone on, the downstream effects are becoming more prevalent.”
McFarland thinks it would be an impossible situation to have one or two years of true eligibility left and be faced with the decision to stay or transfer. The senior, however, has a job lined up as a field operative in Scioto (Ohio) County for President Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, so there’s somewhere to go from here. Given that, he never seriously considered taking up the NCAA on an extra eligibility offer extended in light of the coronavirus.
Besides, Trainor had put things in golf industry terms: Most college graduates enter the real world as an assistant to a local representative, setting up demo days.
“You’re now Scotty Cameron’s tour rep,” he said. “You have to go.”
McFarland will remember Trainor as the kind of guy who was passionate about everything, from golf to politics. He knew when to be hands on and when to just let a guy play. He never pushed for a major swing overhaul, but rather liked to see the little things done right. Course management was a popular topic.
“I think that’s what a good college golf coach does,” McFarland said.
Akron’s men’s golf team is not the first coronavirus casualty, and it’s unlikely to be the last. Both the men’s and women’s teams were slated for elimination at St. Edward’s University, an NCAA Division II school in Austin, Texas, but fought back with an attempt at fundraising that still has them in limbo.
Trainor wondered if fundraising might be a possibility at Akron. He spent several coffee-fueled early-morning hours leading up to the fateful phone call with his athletic director jotting down thoughts and questions, and that was a big one. Ultimately, he wasn’t given the option.
“I would have loved the opportunity to try it,” he said. “If they had thrown a number at me and said raise this, I’d have been like alright, here comes my crowning achievement.”
Trainor has poured energy into this program for the past nine years. Akron was his first head coaching gig, and once there, he didn’t scour job openings. The Berwyn, Pennsylvania, native made Akron home, and there are maybe no better words to explain his mark on the program than simply that he stayed.
“This was my program,” Trainor said, “and one of the things I told our donors, I told supporters, I told kids when I was recruiting them, Herb Page at Kent State built an unbelievable program in Northeast Ohio. He has proven that it can be done, which means that I am going to try my darndest to build an equally as good program as Coach Page did.”
Akron won its own Firestone Invitational for the first time in 2018 under Trainor. During his tenure, two players qualified for three NCAA regional tournaments. In 2016, George Baylis became Akron’s first individual MAC champion.
Akron is home to Firestone Country Club, one of Ohio’s best and for all but one year from 1999 to 2019, host of the PGA Tour’s WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Every school has its draw (hello, warm climates and SEC football), and Firestone was that for Akron.
Trainor’s relationships in the golf community went just as deep as the ones he maintained with his players, and for that reason, under his lead, the Zips legacy became more about people than a place.
St. Edward’s University in Austin eliminated men’s and women’s golf, among other sports, but coaches are on a rescue mission.
Despite an eleventh-hour move to reinstate six St. Edward’s sports programs that were slashed three weeks ago in a round of budget cuts, steep financial goals presented by the administration to save them might well make those last-ditch efforts futile.
The small, private Catholic university in Austin eliminated men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s soccer and cheerleading in April in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Coaches of those programs have worked to raise money and try to meet financial quotas put in place by the university.
The coaches are being asked to come up with pledges totaling more than $2 million per sport by the end of May to ensure the programs will be reinstated for five years. Those coaches are also being asked to work toward fully endowing all their sports to ensure their survival, a total that reaches almost $60 million for the six sports.
The golf and tennis programs would have to generate $16.6 million apiece for the endowments while soccer’s tab would be more than $20 million and cheer $4.6 million, coaches said.
“When St. Edward’s came back to our committee with the numbers, the writing was pretty much on the wall for all of us,” said Jennifer McNeil, the Hilltoppers’ women’s golf coach for 17 years. “If we had more time, we could get this done.”
And what’s the likelihood that men’s and women’s golf will be saved?
“Maybe 5%,” she said.
McNeil coached the first St. Edward’s women’s golf team in the 2003-04 season and also worked as the men’s head golf coach the next season. In 2011, she was the NCAA Division II national coach of the year, and her women’s team won the NCAA West Regional in 2013 and finished fourth at the national championships. One of her two recruits has decommitted.
Debbie Taylor, St. Edward’s athletic director, didn’t sound very optimistic Monday.
“Yes, it’s a challenge,” Taylor said about the quick turnaround and money goals.
Asked if the situation was bleak, Taylor said, “I think it’s going to be very challenging to raise the funds in that amount of time, but I don’t know if I want to put a word on it.”
One parent of a St. Edward’s athlete whose program is being eliminated had no problem calling it bleak and questioned the school’s resolve. The cuts will reduce the school’s number of sports from 16 to 10, the minimum level necessary to remain at the NCAA Division II level.
“They don’t want to make it happen over there,” the parent said. “We’ve offered to pay for two years for the golf program to give all the kids a chance to graduate or move on. It’d cost about $800,000, and we have commitments for half of that. But they want $2.5 million to support a five-year program, which we’ve got to raise by May 31, and we don’t think we can in this environment.”
Estevam Strecker, coach of the men’s tennis team, alternates between optimistic and realistic by the hour. He’s been instructed that he must raise $16.6 million over the five years to fully endow the program.
“That’s a gigantic mountain for the next five years, even if we raised the $2 million this month,” Strecker said. “If we did this, fundraising would become the biggest part of my job.”
He admits he’s had little time to think of his own career.
“There are moments when I’m really motivated and excited, and there are moments of just despair when I say there’s no way we’re going to do this,” Strecker said. ”… But I tell my players every single day to never quit competing; I can’t quit right now, or that would make me a hypocrite. But we’re down a set, and it’s match point.”
McNeil wants to believe St. Edward’s truly wants the sports reinstated, but she has doubts.
“The way it feels was it was a convenient way out,” she said. “I’ve been at St. Ed’s so long, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. In my heart, I want to believe that. In my rational mind, it takes me down a different path.”
St. Edward’s men’s and women’s golf coaches are working to save their programs from university budget cuts caused by the coronavirus.
Chris Hill and Jennifer McNeil have undertaken a staggering amount of correspondence in the past week. Faced with the shuttering of their respective golf programs at St. Edward’s University, an NCAA Division II school in Austin, Texas, coaches Hill and McNeil have mounted phone and letter campaigns. The continuation of their programs depends on it.
“I’ve locked myself in my office and my house,” said Hill, in his second year as head coach of the men’s team. “I’m averaging 11 hours and 21 minutes on my phone.”
Hill had 513 text messages and 233 yet-to-be-returned calls or voicemails on his cell phone Monday morning after an initial round of phone calls and emails. McNeil, meanwhile, and volunteer assistant Emily Kvinta, spent the past few days compiling a spreadsheet of the program’s alumni base. Letters followed.
McNeil should know that list well. The Hilltopper women’s golf team begins and ends with her – and she is nowhere near ready to write the final chapter.
“We’re in this business because we’re fighters and we don’t like to lose. The name of our job is winning and we have to figure out how to do that,” said McNeil, an Austin native.
University officials broke the news to a handful of coaches in a Zoom meeting April 15 that their programs were being dropped in light of budget cuts due to the coronavirus. In addition to men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis and men’s soccer also found themselves on the chopping block. (Cheer is being transitioned to a club team.)
As upper administration continues to meet this week, Hill and McNeil continue to spread the word and figure out what it would mean, financially, to revive the programs – both in the short term and the long term.
Hill just hopes the decision-makers at St. Edward’s are taking note of the number of people who have offered their support. St. Edward’s junior Nico Ciavaglia has helped demonstrate that.
The Detroit native, an entrepreneurship major, is in his second year at St. Edward’s after transferring from Concordia-Texas, where Hill previously coached. When Hill put the initial message in the team’s group chat last week, telling his men that the university was cutting their program, Ciavaglia laughed out loud. He thought it was a joke, refusing to believe it until confirmation from the athletic department – the one coach had warned would be coming – hit his email within the hour.
“I’m really going to miss the family we created, that’s the biggest thing,” Ciavaglia said of where the potential cuts hit the hardest.
Ciavaglia was so angry he started jotting down notes, from emotions he felt to why he thought the university’s decision was off-base. Later that day, he uploaded his thoughts as a petition on change.org and called it a night. He thought 500 people might sign their names, but instead woke up to 2,500 signatures. By Monday morning, nearly 14,000 people had signed.
[jwplayer CYq8DKaK-vgFm21H3]
“The biggest thing to me was that after making this, it really showed how upset other people were as well,” Ciavaglia said. “I cannot believe how awesome the whole Austin community has been. It proves how much they love sports and they love athletics and they love college programs.”
The St. Edward’s student body numbers 3,680 undergraduates, and the student-athlete population is roughly 300. Nearly a third of those athletes would be affected by the proposed athletic cuts.
McNeil coached the first Hilltopper women’s golf team in the 2003-04 season. She also served as the men’s head golf coach for the 2004-05 season and has been a constant for the program. In 2011, she was named the NCGA DII National Coach of the Year. Two years later, the St. Edward’s women ended the 2012-13 season by winning the NCAA West Regional and finishing fourth at the national championship.
It’s an upward trajectory that made last week’s phone call particularly tough to take.
“I woke up Thursday morning and I’m like, ‘No, I’m not going out this way,’” she said.
She and Hill have joined forces. “We’re all one,” Hill said.
In her first year as coach, McNeil had half a scholarship to offer. She now has a little over three. Hill has 2.4 scholarships available (despite the NCAA allowing 3.6). His men’s program has an operating budget of $44,000, but fundraisers have bumped those available funds up to $80,000 per season.
“We’ve never spent a dollar we didn’t have,” Hill said. The program was healthy.
McNeil has also worked to fundraise for her program, and thus create a surplus in her budget. Division II women’s golf is divided into four regions, with St. Edward’s being in a west region that extends all the way to Hawaii. Regular-season competition generally necessitates a couple of flights.
The ladies league at Onion Creek Club – where the Hilltoppers often practice — has embraced McNeil’s program, and had played a huge role in fundraising. A benefit at the club – which included a silent auction and live music – produced $20,000 in its first year.
McNeil names loyalty and relationship-building as the cornerstones of a program she has spent 17 years – her entire coaching career – cultivating. Those qualities have never been needed more.
“When they chose us, they chose family,” McNeil said of a program that has never been about luring players in with huge scholarships. “It became family first, golf second.”
New England Patriots free agent Jamie Collins was courted by the New Orleans Saints, but agreed to a large contract with the Detroit Lions.
[jwplayer sj1H1q9W-ThvAeFxT]
Well, that’s not great. The New Orleans Saints made an offer to New England Patriots linebacker Jamie Collins, but the free agent accepted a different deal with the Detroit Lions — reuniting him with his former coach, Matt Patricia.
It’s disappointing that the Saints weren’t able to add Collins to their already-stout defense, but it might be for the best. NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that Collins joined the Lions on a three-year, $30 million contract with $18 million in guarantees, which was clearly outside New Orleans’ budget for the 30-year-old linebacker.
So for now, the Saints must look to other options to strengthen the second level of their defense. Alex Anzalone and Kiko Alonso are both good players, but they’re each returning from season-ending injuries (so is 2019 draft pick Kaden Elliss, their backup). The only linebackers with clean bills of health in New Orleans are Demario Davis and Craig Robertson, so fans should expect some movement here very soon.
