Just a brief interruption from my blogging break here: according to this at the Detroit News, Ron English, who is a former U of M defensive coordinator, is going to be the head football coach at EMU.
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$350,000 per year for five years.
I know the overall feeling regarding sports on this board, However, watch how much national media attention this hiring draws. This is going to be great advertising and marketing for the school.
His hire grants our football team “instant credibility” and could be a rebirth of our football team.
20,000 EMU fans together each Saturday in the fall may only be a few seasons away. How could that be bad for our school, morale and pride?
I wish him the best but I still think that around 2013 we will have the same discussions here about the new coach:-)
$350k is a lot of money! Isn’t he the guy who was in charge of their defense in Carrs’ last year….Two words: Appalachian State:-)
And why would this hiring bring national media attention?
20,000 EMU fans together each Saturday….I have fantasies too:-)
Sorry to be negative but I have seen this movie for far too long!
Here’s a link to some info:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=3784036
Wow, $350 k plus paying off Genyk? Tough sell I think given the economy. Prove me wrong, please!
Carterman — your comment that
“20,000 EMU fans together each Saturday in the fall may only be a few seasons away. How could that be bad for our school, morale and pride?”
is a prime example of basing institutional decisions on hopes and fantasies rather than on solid data. No data exist to suggest that 20,000 potential EMU football fans exist; no data exist to suggest that English will be able to field a winning team that is revenue neutral rather than draining more cash from academic programs; and no data support the conclusion that a few moments attention to English’s hiring on ESPN and other media outlets will in any serious way enhance EMU’s reputation or increase that total resources devoted to educating EMU students.
I wish English and the football team well. But I object to the continual diminishment of EMU’s importance to a sport that little interests most EMU students, and that is increasingly expensive to maintain. EMU football will never pay its own costs; English’s new salary, and the likely increased salaries of his staff, are proof of that. They cost more than many academic programs, and they produce no revenue and award no degrees. EMU football is a drain on the state of Michigan, not an asset. Sad but true. Not unique to EMU either.
$350,000. How many full ride academic scholarships to EMU could that fund? More than the university presently funds, if I am not mistaken.
The University presently funds the full number of scholarships for each sport. EMU currently spends a little over one million dollars on football. The team will bring in over $2 million in guarantees next year. 20,000 fans is not fantasy. I’ve seen it done here.
You can go to the local party store and buy a lottery ticket, and it may end up a winner. The odds, however, are not in your favor.
You can hire a coach who was an assistant at a school that is up the food chain in football, and you may have a winner. Based on Eastern’s track record, however, the odds are not stacked in the school’s favor.
As I recall, the last two coaches were assistants (one in the Big 10 and one in the PAC 10?) before coming to Eastern. They had a combined record of something like 24-76.
Since the school chose not to break the pattern and hire someone who has won a championship as a head coach down the food chain, fans can only cross their fingers and hope that Eastern finally picked someone with all 6 numbers.
EMU has more full ride scholarships for football than for academics.
I am beginning to feel that the academics at EMU has a mistaken image of who they are. I would like some comments regarding what type of institution they believe EMU to be and its position in academia.
The facts are this:
Football is not a significant revenue drain.
Large amount of fans attended EMU football games less that 20 years ago.
Bring this discussion to significant alumni and donors to the university and see what they say about Football?
I understand what the primary purpose of the University should be but ask 40,000 fans and alumni of Central that are going to the Motor City Bowl this Friday if it keeps them connected to the university and they would say resoundingly “YES”. These are the taxpayers, voters, donors and patrons of the university.
I doubt one of your history lectures could do the same.
And ANON I have questions for you:
How do you believe that giving someone an athletic scholarship is any less worthy than an academic scholarship?
Do you have evidence regarding those who have accepted the scholarships to indicate which would provide the greatest benefit to society?
It is a shame they won’t look at head coaches from smaller schools in Michigan that have actually won something. Or even past EMU greats like John Banaszak who has been a successful coach a D-111 school. Look at Grand Valley and the coach at Wayne State. This is Carr calling the shots for one of his assistants. What did people expect when Carr was named an unpaid assistant on the search. I wish Ron English success but did he really earn this position?
Education first, let’s not all forget:-)
Dear Carterman,
One of the inherent worries in trying to convert a losing football team into a winning one is that every new coach is second-guessed on everything until he has a terrific season. See all the comments arguing English is not the right choice; this kind of thing is par for the course, since so many fans believe they know more than the AD. I accept that the AD has made the right choice. No second guessing from me. I wish English the best, but he’s pushing uphill, as he I am sure well knows.
Your term “significant revenue drain” is vague. What’s not vague is that football costs EMU far more than it produces, once an honest accounting of expenses/revenue is done. The claim made that EMU football costs only a million is quite mistaken. No academic program at EMU would be allowed to continue if it did not produce more revenue than expenses. Why the double standard?
As for Central’s vast number of fans coming to a game in Detroit – so what? Mt. Pleasant’s location puts their football program in an entirely different context than EMU; around here, there’s always a far wider choice for potential fans. Not so in Mt. Pleasant, where there’s never as much going on as in SE Michigan. There are countless examples of strong sports teams at some other school, but using those successes to argue by analogy “that we could be like that” is a very weak argument; why not cite all the other schools with empty stadiums and arenas, and losing records? Those examples are just as relevant as the successful ones of a given moment.
Academic scholarships have more value than athletic ones because the academic scholarships enhance the university’s reputation, aid the ability of EMU to attract top students, and fund students who graduate and become productive, educated members of society.
Twenty years ago, reportedly there were crowds at EMU games, at least now and then. Twenty years ago, cable TV was rather new. Back then, EMU had fewer non-traditional students, and a higher percentage of our students lived on campus. The culture has changed. A lot. So has EMU. Football is less popular with undergraduates now, and EMU’s graduate students and transfer students, who are a larger fraction of our student population, are less likely than younger undergraduates to find time to attend football games. Our students across all categories are working more hours and have less leisure time now than a couple decades ago; they are more focused on just getting their degree and moving on to a career, less engaged in campus life. Six in ten EMU students today are now female, and women, on average, are less likely to enjoy watching football. Hopes of filling the stadium rest on attracting an unrealistically high percent of residential undergraduates and on ignoring all demographic trends that show how difficult this undertaking is. Good luck with this uphill and inherently increasingly expensive mission to restore the conditions of the early 1980s.
Welcome to EMU, Coach English! May you have every success. Go Eagles!
Athletic Club & E-Club Board Members,
Athletic Director Derrick Gragg has asked me to share some exciting news with all of you. We will be introducing our new head football coach, Ron English, tomorrow (Monday) at a 1pm press conference in the EMU Convocation Center; however, we wanted all of you to have the “official word” directly from us before we make our public announcement at tomorrow’s press conference.
Below you will find information pertaining to Ron’s career as both a Division IA student-athlete and coach. We hope you will be on campus tomorrow at 1 p.m. for the press conference and the reception that will follow to meet Ron, his wife, and their three children, who will also be in attendance.
Thank you for all you have done for our program. We look forward to continuing to work with you as we enter this exciting new era for EMU Football.
I was really hoping for Fred Jackson, because I think he is the superior candidate, especially for recruiting in the state of Michigan. Thus, English was a disappointment in that I don’t see him being a solid state of Michigan recruiter (gone too long). We’ll see.
But we move forward.
At any rate, I’m cheering for EMU football!
Go Eagles!!
Best of luck Coach English!
http://emyouthemagazine.blogspot.com/2008/12/ron-english-named-new-emu-football.html
New Prsident, new football coach, new buildings (on the way)…lets just pray enrollment increases (or doesn’t decrease) and that we continue to head in the right direction!
GO EAGLES!!!!!!!!
This is a comment from Walter Moss:
Re the firing of of the old football coach, the hiring of a new one, and the two salaries EMU will be paying, our misplaced priorities on education vs sports certainly seem inappropriate. Maybe as Howard Bunsis recently wrote to AAUP union members we should change our EMU motto to Education First and Ten.
Walter Moss
“…we should change our EMU motto to Education First and Ten.”
Ow. Someone throw a flag, please.
Oh com’on, it’s totally Education First and Fifteen. We always jump offsides first.
There were several more qualified coaches who were passed over in favor of him.
From what I hear, Coach English’s salary isn’t as much as has been reported on this blog and in the press. Personally, i believe in labor markets determining salaries for new hires, so I don’t much care what his salary is: I believe it’s competative but not excessive for his field. Either we drop out of football, or we go for a good coach and fund the program with a real budget with appropriate resources. I’m against the in-between approach.
Too many people are reacting to hiring English in an emotional way rather than looking at the big picture. Looking at just one administrator’s salary is a narrow minded way of examining administrative personnel costs, and needlessly personalizes things. (Just as the Fallon Administration’s effort to focus public attention on EMU’s highest earning faculty members as a way of claiming EMU profs are overpaid was both misleading and dishonest. Most of those highly paid faculty were former administrators who took their administrative salary or much of it into their new faculty jobs). EMU’s salary structure for administrators is over-inflated not for the new hires from the outside, but for the long term EMU administrators, whose earnings at EMU would not, in almost all other cases, be equalled if they went on the market and tried to get similar jobs.
I’m not a huge football fan, to say the least. Football interests me largely as a culturall/historical topic, less as sport and more as national obsession. Lots of higher ed people today are sorting out why so many believe a university’s identity is tied up with a form of entertainment that has so little life-long educational value or utility; few or no middle aged people play football, unlike all the other college sports, and it is the most gendered game of all. Indeed, the focus on collegiate football, first formed a century ago by the Ivy League, is one of the ways that the Ivy League elite’s experiences have most shaped American higher education. This is all interesting history and sociology. Few or no other sports have been so largely “spectator” rather participant focused from the origin of the game.
That said, Coach Ron English strikes me as an excellent choice for EMU’s head football coach, and I wish him the best of luck. Whatever he’s paid, I’m sure it’ll be well earned.
That however is a different question than what should the place of football be at a university. That’s a debate EMU has never tackled openly, in a dispassionate way. I am sorry that Coach English starts his tenure at EMU with a program that carries such baggage; I hope he succeeds in shedding that baggage and creating a well run transparent program that puts “Education First.”
I agree with Mark, but I also think that Howard Bunsis makes some excellent points in his email, things that I was trying to bring up earlier too: in the face of big cuts in faculty hiring and the predictions of big budget cuts in the next year or so, it would be at least polite for the athletic office to acknowledge the rather privileged state they are in here.
Education First
A. At the outset, there seemed to be a certain irony in watching the president hand an honorary degree to a former player who had quit school to turn pro while the backdrop for the presentation (if one had the right seat) was:
EDUCATION FIRST
The player then gave some very gracious and thoughtful remarks, and any irony disappeared. He had indeed received an education — it just wasn’t one from the classroom.
Everyone applauded, including the St. Bonaventure fans. They also recognized the phenomenal achievements of the former player as well as his life’s lessons learned.
B. If one looks at Eastern’s course catalogue, one could conclude that perhaps those who drop out of school and face life without a degree might get an education that is more worthwhile than one from today’s classroom.
If the university wants to make Education First a reality and not just a slogan, it should institute requirements for a degree.
These would include at a minimum :
a. two semesters of Intro to Logic
b. one semester on the U. S. constitution
c. American History
d. History of Western Civ
e. Calculus
f. European History from WWI through WWII
In addition, the candidate for a degree would have to demonstrate proficiency in oral as well as written standard English.
C. Some professors could also help out by getting away from student papers on touchy-feely topics and turn to those that deal only with substantive matters.
Tolerance of opposing views would also not only be welcome but would also create an environment where such an exchange of opposing views would enhance the educational experience.
Eastern’s grads would then have an Education First degree, and they would outshine grads from many of the self-proclaimed “elite” universities.
The more I think about what happened, the more outrage I feel. Why all the confusion on English’s salary? If it is $350k I think it is an outrage to more than double the previous coach’s salary. For what?????? If he was a successful coach somewhere else I would understand and I may just applaud it. But, from what I know, the guy has been an assistant in Carr’s team and did well for several years but then he bombed (Appalachian State) in his last year leaving the team with pretty much no talent for Rodriguez. Then he spent one year in a Louisville team with a LOSING record! Then our AD had the brilliant moment to give Genyk a 3 year contract extension and now EMU is left holding the bag paying him for the next two years! And why did Genyk get a raise from $145k or so to $188k????
And, as pointed out, why do we pay a search firm $40k when it appeared to be pretty much a done deal when Carr came along to throw a bone to one of his former assistants??
Based on our AD’s performance so far (payoffs to fired coaches, contracts to unproven former assistant coaches hired ,and record of basketball coaches, attendance numbers) I think the guy has done a very poor job. Hey, give him a raise too!!!!
For the record, I like Ramsay who I think he has had an incredible amount of bad luck in his tenure! And I really wish Ron English well and love to have him make me eat my words!
Respectfully.
EagleG — if Genyk gets another head coach job, does his contract with EMU still obligate us to pay him for the next two years? A detail I don’t know, but it goes to the competence by which EMU negotiates such contracts. Just curious, but any info on this would be appreciated!
Warpath — I agree that EMU has the potential to offer a curriculum and a well designed education that would allow us to outperform what’s done at the most elite universities (after all, those schools largely reward what the student has achieved before arriving on campus, but that’s another story). To achieve that, EMU however needs real academic leadership in the Division of Academic Affairs, and we’ve never had that in recent decades. We’ve had bullies and nice guys who finish last as provosts, but no visionaries, nobody capable of leading the faculty, nobody with the ability to move EMU education forward. And while I agree that there may be problems in our menu form of general education, your prescriptions for required courses are of course up for debate, and leave a lot out (such as the life and physical sciences, and the scientific method), so your list is as biased and as flawed as anyone’s. Though my own teaching interests would do well under your mandated system….
But warpath, your having brought up general education requirements reminds me of an old joke. It goes something like this: An academic leader – let’s say a dean – dies and gets to St. Peter’s gates. But before he’s admitted, St Peter says the dean has to pass one final test to assess his worthiness for heaven. He can choose from one of two tests — either bring peace to the Middle East, or design a General Education program for a major university that will satisfy all students and faculty and alumni and administrators, and ensure all graduates have a well rounded “general” education. The dean, no slouch when it comes to gaming tests and all forms of assessment, asks whether picking the easier test would be held against him? Is there a penalty for skipping the difficult task? St. Peter says no, it doesn’t matter which test you try, as long as you succeed. The dean then says, “OK, give me the easy one. Where’s that map of the Middle East?”
I asked the question and it was yes, he gets his money regardless of his employment situation.
Alum, thanks for the info. Who is responsible for having negotiated that contract?
There’s a large and highly favorable sports story on Coach English in the Tuesday AA NEWS, by Jeff Arnold, plus a column by John Heuser on the “daunting task” English has inherited. Heuser concludes by saying “If English can’t win, don’t be surprised.. That’s the legacy of EMU football.” These articles also note that EMU has never sold out the 30,000 seats in the stadium, and that not in 35 years has an EMU football coach left with a winning record.
Those two articles dominate the first page of the sports section. The top story on page three is “EMU faculty want academic investment,” and quotes Professors Howard Bunsis and Russ Larson on the need to put academics first. Not sure if these are all online or not.
The AA NEWS also report his salary is $300,000, not the $350,000 widely reported (and i am told misleadingly leaked by someone in athletics).
Don’t know who is responsible. I saw the contract on the internet on “Coaches Hot Seat”. That site is now “pay” only. Just tried to access it. Subcription is $20.00. What struck me about so many of the contracts is that they were form documents that were old and still typed (type writer), pasted in with changes, fill in the blanks. In addition, the contracts contained incentives on the number of wins, winning championships and going to bowl games. Even Genyk’s. I would assume that paying coaches off after they are fired is pretty common given the type of job it is with no security. It’s what the market will bear.
>>>>>>>It’s what the market will bear.
Interesting statement. Let’s see. The market had Genyk making $140k per year, getting a 3 yr contract extension that was definitely not warranted based on his record, making $180k in his last year, paying him $350k to go away and NOW the market, in a year of record job losses amid the toughest recession since the Great Depression, will magically bear paying English $300k per year for a record that is definitely not warranted! What the hell is going here???? Hey, I would be the first one to say give him this salary if he turns around the ship in a year or two…but then again, he would be going to a bigger school if he does that and then we are back to square one yet again. This has happened to several MAC schools except us!
I also think that interviewing for these jobs is more of an interpersonal skills likability contest. How Boone got through is still a mystery:-) The record always shows who backs up the talk. And our football program’s record has shown that they all talk big and then they fall flat on their faces.
How can we fault English for his contract? He did fantasticl! He probably got a huge raise from being an assistant in a losing team for a year! How much was he making there? It would be interesting to know. I would be shocked if he made more than $150k in salary! Hey, doubling his salary, not bad at all in these rough economic times, thanks you AD! The kicker is that since they are throwing him so much money the school can not pay his assistants much so I can see the first excuses three years from now (when he gets a 3 year contract extension)…no practice facility, not good assistants because the school was not committed to winning, blah blah.
Where is the outrage? Education first my ass!!! We keep throwing millions after a program hoping for a turnaround so we can all go to a Bowl game and get some Alumni excited and throw the school some more money…What a sham!!!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Oh the humanity! Ak! Ak! Ak! Like I’ve said before, name me one department or division at this University that can make a million dollars in one afternoon!
>>>>>>…name me one department or division at this University that can make a million dollars in one afternoon!
Can you name one department that does not require us to become punching bags and practice dummies for a big school to tune up their teams for the season?….we usually play at least one or two games every season where we all swell with school pride losing 49-0 or 55-0!
Alum, obviously you have no problem with the facts I posted and you are happy with these kind of contracts without raising legitimate questions. The link below reports on the MAC football coach salaries:
http://macreportonline.com/index.php/20071205188/Football/MAC-Football-Coaches-Salaries-Still-Lag.html
The list is 1 year old. Taking the Temple coach out of the picture and sticking with the Base salary only (I hope Genyk did not receive any bonuses for his records here but ya never know with the people who are negotiating the EMU contracts!) don’t you think that English is highly overpaid (assuming his base is indeed $300k)?
This is another fun link, I guess English worked for a very good and highly regarded coach, cough:-)
http://firekragthorpenow.com/archives2008.html
I would love to find out English’s previous base salary at Louisville? I tried but I could not, anyone knows?
Alum,
As for a department that makes a million dollars for EMU in a day: I must respectfully suggest that no university deal “inked” on a given day for any sum is reasonably measured as one day’s earnings. Reasonable accounting principles would I think require that the revenue of such deals be calculated on to an annual basis. It’s not a jackpot – it’s a revenue flow.
Likewise, one could argue that all credit-bearing EMU departments produced X # of dollars on the days that students taking courses in those departments pay their tuition bills. Or we could tally up how many credit hours in a given department were registered for by students on a given day, and doing so would no doubt produce lots of departments with “million dollar days.” All this could be calculated, but would mean little. What matters is revenue sources, budgets, and institutional purposes. Credit bearing courses correspond to very closely to institutional purposes, if “Education First” means something real, and courses also produce revenue. Football? A case has to be made as to how it fits the institutional purpose and what costs are reasonable for it. A deal made on a given day means little, aside from the possible emotional high it brings to the deal makers inking the paper. That the deal makers preside over a program whose expenses out strip revenue every year and which boasts losing records year after year, are perhaps facts that ought to let the air out of that emotional high.
In contrast, the university’s academic program has never run at a financial loss and every year it achieves it mission of educating and graduating students. I think it ought to do better, but EMU academics are successful. Not so EMU football.
EagleG — I personally don’t give two hoots for U. of Louisville football, from which Ron English has been recruited to EMU, but the web site you link to is an insult to any university affiliated program. It is clearly created by people who disdain the real purposes that universities exist to serve. Its authors may dislike the current coach there and want him fired, but it is unreasonable of them to use photos of actual violent hostage taking situations to make their claim that the coach is holding Louisville football “hostage,” and posting a picture of Stalin to attack that coach is equally unreasonable. Not even the worst coach ever in football is morally equal to a dictator guilty of murdering millions of people, and the comparison is offensive and adds nothing to the debate. Using a photo of an actual bus wreck to say this coach has wrecked the football program is also beyond the pale, as is the image of an Elmo doll having hung itself in suicidial despair over this allegedly terrible coach’s record. Of course, all this idiotic and offensive speech via cut and paste is still protected speech.
Photoshop is neat, and the internet is fast, but we should not allow standards of reason and evidence to be ignored, and then still use those sources as if they were valid. Especially not for any topic that is associated with a university! College football teams are associated with universities, and their fans ought to be expected to comport themselves with some due respect for university values. These zealous fans at Louisville should undergo some education about responsible advocacy.
1. “40,000 fans and alumni of Central”
(— and there were that many plus a few more)
The significance of the fact that they are (still) the Chippewas and that the same word appears on the front of the football jerseys goes unnoticed by those running the show at Eastern as well how that relates to attendance at Eastern.
2. Last night, CMU lost a close game against Florida Atlantic — whose program has gone from the status of unknown just 6 years ago to consecutive bowl wins over the last 2 seasons.
The school hired a coach who had previously proven he could win as a head coach — and that’s what he’s done.
3. U-Minnesota Duluth was 4-6 last season. It then resurrected a head coach who had previously proven he could win as a head coach.
The team went undefeated during the regular season and then continued undefeated throughout the playoffs to win a national championship in Division II — running the table at 15-0 — a huge turnaround — in just one year.
It will be interesting to see what English will be paying his assistants based on the supposed increased budget for Asst. Coaches. I am a little bit disappointed in the new Prez not playing a larger role in this decision. I hope it is not an indicator of lack of leadership which we have seen from the past few Presidents. There were other qualified current head coaches from smaller schools in Michigan that were not considered. People do not realize the jump from being a an assistant coach to head coach. Eastern has found this out with the past football coaches who failed miserably. I wish English well but have nothing to base this on from his carrer other then Carr wanted him to get the job.