Hoke to make $2 million per year
http://detnews.com/article/20110330/SPORTS0201/103300395/Hoke-to-make-$…
After both major parties involved — Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon and new football coach Brady Hoke — insisted finalizing Hoke's contract was not a priority, they have reached an agreement. Hoke on Monday signed a six-year contract worth $2 million the first year, according to Brandon. The base salary is $300,000, with $1.7 million in additional compensation. The contract, which goes through December 2016, will be publicly released this morning.
Hoke will get a $100,000 increase in salary each year through the six years of the contract. There's a stay bonus of $1.5 million after coaching three seasons, and another $1.5 million after the sixth.
Also in the article is this new video of spring practice:
300K with 1.7M additional compensation? I'm not sure what that means. Is that like incentives for winning b10 championships etc.? Or is that guaranteed money?
It's probably from Adidas contract, TV, camps.
March 30th, 2011 at 12:28 PM ^
Wasn't RR's total compensation in the 2.5-3M range? Not that I think Hoke deserves it, but what was all that "we are going to pay our coaches top dollar" stuff about from DB? We just hired a budget coach.
March 30th, 2011 at 12:40 PM ^
2.5m for RR. I think he was talking more about the assistants: we now have the highest paid assistant in the conference, and the other assistants got substantial raises, IIRC.
Hoke is also in the top 1/3 of the Big Ten for salary. Only OSU, Iowa and UN pay better.
than 3 milion to Harbaugh and possibly Miles. But why pay anyone more than necessary to get him here? Hopefully, he offered Harbaugh the bank and there was no reasonable price that would have landed him.
total compensation can be as high as $3.25 mil.
http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2011/03/30/michigans-hoke-make-325-mil-year/
I think it's incentive for winning Big10 games.
Too soon?
March 30th, 2011 at 10:02 AM ^
300k is his salary for coaching only. The other money is everything else. I don't know exactly what that pertains to but I'm assuming the sunday morning TV Show, radio interviews, wearing Adidas, etc.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:03 AM ^
Since the athletic department functions as its own business unit, and the football program's the major revenue generator, I think that the program is also a sub-business under the department with major revenue generation from endorsements like adidias and the M-Club boosters. Therefore, the base salary comes form the athletic department budget and the $1.7MM additional compensation comes from the football program budget and hence why the distinction is made in the total compensation.
Just a theory so if anyone knows for sure, please shed a light on this...
March 30th, 2011 at 10:22 AM ^
I guess I spoke too soon, but here's the best breakdown I found so far in the "Additional Compensation".
March 30th, 2011 at 10:08 AM ^
Listen the do this to say that his "salary" is 300K, so morons cant complain about a public employee making 2 million dollars. The other stuff is his salary also, but they just say its for other stuff, and claim he gets 500k for wearing adidas, 500k for "speaking engagements" 300k for camps.
March 30th, 2011 at 11:22 AM ^
This was the same way Lloyd's contract worked, likely RR's, as well, though I never saw the details.
Official compensation from the University itself is rarely above 6 figures. Lloyd's last year he was making $600,000 from the University, but received the bulk of his salary from other means, like hosting the postgame show (Inside Michigan Football, I think), and doing other appearances in accordance with whatever media agreements the University has. Also, as mentioned, the Addidas deal brings in money for the coach, among other endorsements, to help finalize his full salary. The 2 million dollar figure is all guaranteed money, granted he fulfills his media obligations, which, I am sure he will.
I am fairly certain this is how coaching contracts work at most institutions.
All coaches' contracts are like that. The "base salary" is always a small fraction of the total compensation. I don't know why they bother - the money all comes from the same source anyway.
He doesn't care about money.
Hoke is so tuff that he doesn't need food or shelter. He's gonna bring more tuffness to this football team.
this is the kind of low i.q., reflexive hurrhurr manpoop that you never used to find here three, four, five years ago, and that made me proud that Michigan was a little different. I mean, if we're just here to slather each other's balls, then why think at all.
It's no wonder that 3/4 of visitors can't even relate to Brian, the guy whose soul invests the place. They just think it's Homerville, and feel a little annoyed when his wierdness pops up. Yuck just frackin yuck.
I think it was sarcasm?
March 30th, 2011 at 10:10 AM ^
Brian's "weirdness" is 70% of the reason I joined this site. I thought I was alone in a world of computer engineers who enjoy sports and I lucked out to find a site ran by someone not only of that creed but one that follows the team I am so passionate about.
That being said...
Chalk it up to RR attrition, the Freep, or whatever but it's going to take a while to get back to a "unified" Michigan, and I use that loosely because there were people in the Lloyd days that couldn't stand the "3 yards and a cloud of dust" run-run-pass-punt that was the trademark of those years while guys like Troy Smith and Dennis Dixon were shredding (our) defenses; it wasn't as sexy and I promise you every time Michigan lost a game people were arguing about some drive where Lloyd elected to punt on 4th and 2 while down in the 4th.
Not everyone is going to agree on everything and when people, especially newcomers, see things like "MANBALL? Manball." on the front page (read: "yuck just frackin yuck"), and you combine that with 3 years of (heavy) attrition, people are going to assume that that sort of thing is the modicum response for the current situation on this site.
It's not just the plebs on the board that are yucking it up. Not to say that it's a bad thing, I enjoy Brian's tongue-in-cheek remarks even when I don't necessarily agree with them, but to imply some sense of "holier than thou" doesn't contribute anything to the positive either.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:14 AM ^
Smart enough to understand sarcasm, and wasn't reduce to crass imagery at every turn. Thanks for illustrating that was very wrong, over and over.
It's no wonder that 3/4 of visitors can't even relate to Brian, the guy whose soul invests the place. They just think it's Homerville, and feel a little annoyed when his wierdness pops up. Yuck just frackin yuck.
This is some inspired gibberish right here. Preach on.
when he starts winning B1G Championships.
Can you say "overpaid?" This is no different than a big-time banker compensation package at a bailout bank. The annual salary appears to be deflated ($300,000) compared to other coaches at the same level but the additional comp ($1.7MM) brings the total compensation up to competition. I can't believe they are paying $2MM for Hoke, who I am safe to assume was making MUCH less at SDSU. What a joke.
He was making $700,000 last season with SDSU and they offered him a contract worth $1 million. So it's not that big of a jump considering he's coaching at Michigan vs. SDSU. You don't want to send the wrong message either. You pay a coach what he was going to get paid at SDSU and I'm sure that could be used in negative recruiting to say we don't really care or don't trust Hoke to be here longer....or we know we weren't hiring a good coach; things along those lines. He is making less than RR started at and I think the jumps to higher salary is deserved.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:16 AM ^
I agree with most all of what you state. The only exception I take is that Hoke came in allegedly not caring one bit about the compensation package. The leverage was all in the hands of the AD and we now find out that Hoke is going to be making close to what Rodriguez was making when he started. I don't disagree that a head coach at Michigan should make as much as the other "big boys" - my point is that Hoke didn't ask for that kind of money but they gave it to him anyway. That is not how business negotiations are supposed to work and lets not kid anyone - this is big business.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:31 AM ^
Hoke has someone negotiating the money for him. That person is going to try to get as much for his client as he can, because he gets a piece of that. If Hoke cared about money, he wouldn't have started coaching before his salary was set.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:38 AM ^
You do realize that was all PR stuff, right?
He wouldn't have actually walked here from San Diego, and he did actually care about his pay? Are you really naive enough to believe those at face value?
March 30th, 2011 at 10:46 AM ^
Contrary to popular belief, I am not an idiot. The public perception stuff matters. I know he has lawyers negotiating on his behalf - I do that for a living. And I know he wanted to get paid. But do not go in front of cameras and press and claim not to care about the salary and then have a salary released that is much higher than some would have expected after all that talk. In my opinion, that does not look good and that was my initial response (you can see it above and see me getting hammered for it, but it was my first reaction and I went with it).
I know how big business and negotiations work. But you don't have high-paid executives going in front of cameras talking about how they do not care about the compensation package.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:58 AM ^
A head football coach at a major program is much different from a corprorate executive. Business exec's don't have "fans" and regular press conferences and, right or wrong, nearly as many people following what they do and how they perform. Hoke is more similar to a pro athlete than an exec - he has a persona and he appeals to his fanbase.
He never really meant he didn't care about they money - the reason he's been coaching and recruiting and paying assistants this whole time without a contract. However, he never said he didn't want to make money. He never said he wanted a meager salary. He said he wasn't worried about the contract - because he knew it would get ironed out and he trusted he'd get compensated fairly. which I think is exactly what happened.
He took the job without even discussing salary. Everyone knew he would be getting a nice raise from what he made as SDSU. You have to pay the guy at competitive rate to the top paying HC positions in the conference. His 2 million with the package is 4th below Tressel, Ferentz, and I believe Bielema. Rich Rod was making 2.5 million and he signed his deal in 2008. Salaries have definitely increased in coaching in the last 3 years. I figured 1.5-2 million was fair.
- Tressel (~4)
- Ferentz (3.7)
- Pelini (2.1)
- Hoke (2)
March 30th, 2011 at 10:43 PM ^
Er, he apologized, never mind
If you didn't make his pay comparable to what the top coaches get, other schools would steal him away from us.
March 30th, 2011 at 10:52 AM ^
Proft - in my experience, you're usually not an idiot, but you certainly are today. 2MM is about the minimum UM would pay a head football coach this year, no matter who it was. It sends a strong message when our coach is making the same money as Purdue's coach or Northwestern's coach.
UM is not a place where a football coach makes average HC money. Some schools will pay a coach a lower salary until he proves himself, but that's not what elite schools do. The elite schools pay elite money up front, and if you win you get more, and if you lose you get fired. But Michigan would never have paid Hoke a million a year or near there, because that's not what the UM coach makes.
March 30th, 2011 at 12:57 PM ^
You make a good argument and I am not above admitting when I am wrong. I agree with your point that perception also matters with respect to the pay grade of a Michigan coach needing to be higher than that of lesser football programs. That makes sense. I think I was just under the impression that Michigan was going to treat Hoke as a coach that would get paid less than usual based on the initial statements by Hoke et al. Maybe the incentives are such that Hoke will actually make much less than the $2MM amount.
Just to chime in, it sounds like the 2m is the base amount. 300k from the school, and 1.7m from Adidas, TV and what not, with further incentives for longevity and championships.
The one other thing I'd add is that it's not as much perception as it is expectation. Where Bowling Green might hire a coach and reward him for winning, the expectation here is that Michigan will win. Hoke is paid like a winner because that's exactly what the expectations are. If he doesn't win, he won't keep the same "starter" salary like he might at a BG, because he'll be out the door.
Elite schools hire whomever they think is the right fit. Hoke's résumé is more distinguished than either Gary Moeller's or Lloyd Carr's at the time they were hired as head coaches.
Saying "Elite programs hire elite coaches" is a far emptier statement. Other than Rodriguez, just how many "elite" coaches have we hired over the years? Carr had no HC experience. Mo was a horrific failure at Illinois. Bo was a MAC coach. Elliott and Oosterbaan were in-house guys we promoted. You have to go back to Fritz Crisler in 1938 to find the previous "elite" coach.
As for us "paying $20 for a $10 pizza," if you try to pay a coach the cheapest salary possible, that's a great way to plant the seed for future tension. Our basketball program once had a tradition of losing coaches to other schools (and crappier ones at that) because we always tried to stiff them as much as possible. We aren't hemmed in by budgetary issues. Being cheap for the sake of being cheap is stupid.
Being wasteful for the sake of being wasteful seems less than gallant to me. I'll also add that there are other "elite" programs, and if they go outside the family, they do tend to prefer more accomplished candidates. If Hoke produces, of course he would/will be in line for a raise to prevent the very scenario you laid out. But this was clearly Brandon bidding against himself.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about Mo and Lloyd (and Mo was definitely an in house promotion. The guy was here for almost a decade after Illinois and before taking the reins). There wasn't such a glut of information back in the day, so I'm not sure if all those in house hires Mo, Lloyd, et al. were even part of any search that might have included better candidates.
You are certainly correct that UM isn't "hemmed in by budgetary issues," but I do think it would have been advantageous to hire a top-end candidate rather than just give top-end money to a guy who is not (by any measurable metric). I suppose reasonable men will have to differ about how much subjective things like "fit" matter. Personally, not having to a teach a guy "The Victors" (if I may paraphrase DB) doesn't mean much to me.
As WolvinLA2 argued above, which I agree with, paying a guy a bargain price says to him, the conference, the media, and the fans that you either think they're not worth the money, or being cheap.
Neither is a good message to send. If he coaches here through the end of the contract, it's probably a sign he was worth the money. If he does not, the problem will rectify itself.
Hoke is a Purdue / NW level hire?
Yes, we really should have gone with a much higher profile name for this hire. Someone who was considered a hot coach, perhaps. Maybe someone who was considered to be an offensive innovator that had massive success in a lesser conference like, perhaps, the Big East. Certainly, big name status and hotness count more than fit, right?
Just curious, but were you watching the past three years?
In poker, they call this kind of ridiculous thinking "tilt."
My aces got cracked by 2-7, so 2-7 must be better!
Rich didnt work out, but that doesn't mean he was a bad hire. Hoke was a bad hire, but that doesn't mean he won't work out. I know that sounds counterintuitive.
You're playing with an odd definition of "good" and "bad" hire, even if such a definition could be universally agreed on.
Your larger point, I think, is that Rodriguez's results were unknowable at the time of his hire, so, based on what we knew then, hiring him made absolute sense given his career to the point. I agree with that.
However, that doesn't mean it was "a good hire", because it's not as if many of the items that caused his demise (poor staff hires, inattention to defense, etc) were beyond his control. What made him seem like a "good hire" was our, and Bill Martin's, inability to see that he was an offensive coordinator propped up by an excellent DC (who he wasn't bringing), that he didn't have a great track-record of recruiting, and that he seemed to value loyalty over production in some of his coaching staff positions.
A failure to see what seems clear now doesn't mean it was a good hire - it means that we failed to see why it wasn't.
Your evaluation appears to begin and end at external won-loss records. By those standards, yes, RR was a good hire and Hoke is more debatable (his overall record isn't good, but both of his programs trended upward). But that isn't the only important criterion.
In terms of fitting into the long-established culture at this school and athletic department, RR was a poor hire. He butted heads with many alumni, former players, and Carr-recruted players from the start. The public perception of the program was damaged, and the failure of the Carr recruits to fully buy into to his system pretty much ensured disaster in 2008 and '09.
Contrast this with John Beilein, who came here not really knowing much about our history but really made it a point to embrace it and reach out to his predecessors as much as he could (even when some of them badmouthed him at the outset). He has always been extremely complimentary of Tommy Amaker, when he frankly didn't have to be. He made the rather bold move of welcoming back the Fab Five players other than Webber, when he could have tiptoed around the whole thing. Beilein became so entrenched in the school culture that the thought of firing him prior to this past season struck Brandon as absurd.
The early returns on Hoke in this critical area are promising. He seems to have former players on board and for now, at least, the current players. Hopefully that will continue.
Like who?
<br>
<br>Florida, Nebraska, Oklahoma hiring coordinators? USC, hiring a mobile train wreck (or a failed NFL coach before him)? Tennessee x 2? OSU, a guy from a lesser division? Auburn? Miami, FSU? Who are all these elites grabbing hot shots? LSU, Alabama, Meyer Florida (though not Zook Florida), and actually, Michigan with Rich are some of the few to go and grab the "hot guy" at the time. Maybe ND, but considering their track record....
<br>
<br>So your perception comes from a fallacy.
March 31st, 2011 at 11:01 AM ^
I assume you meant candidates that are percieved to be "elite". We tried that once and only once. Didnt work out very well.
Now we'll try a new road, a coach who is qualified but not flashy or elite. Someone who will hopefully have the humility to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Someone who's ego will not dictate his actions regardless of the outcome.
Because I figured someone would come Sony and cover all the points more succinctly, and sound less hostile doing it, and in these 2 posts you laid it all out far better than I could have imagined it.
Even if it's true that Hoke doesn't care about his compensation (which is doubtful; he's a human being), the advantages of stiffing him (saving a few hundred thou) do not outweigh the negative perception of looking like a penny-pinching athletic department. And that kind of perception can fester in the coach's mind and come to a head later on, when the chips are down - look at what's going on with Purdue and Matt Painter.
Hoke is getting less than RR did. That alone should be incentive to perform.
College football coaches, like Wall Street banking execs, are definitely overpaid.
$300K/year is enough to place someone in the highest 0.001% of income earners in the world.
And funny that the contract in for six years when, in all likelihood, this loser (47-50) will not even last half of that. If it is smart for Brandon to provide an incentive laden contract then that should cut both ways. That is to say, for every loss below .500 the buyout drops by, for example's sake, $100K. At that rate, Cowhoke™ would be owing the University money by the time he is terminated.