Multi-Year Contracts

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

There has been some discussion regarding multi-year contracts in another football thread after losing some quality assistants, and rather than continue the thread drift there I started a new one.

I would appreciate some input on a couple questions/thoughts I have:

How would SDSU benefit from offering multi-year contracts?

Multi-year seems like one more tool for an AD to use to get their candidate, not the best candidate. I think it has caused athletic directors to become lazy in the hiring process - ask the consultants who to hire, then put together a package to get that person. Instead of hunting for a candidate that fits, AD's just throw as much as they can at the candidate they want.

The main argument seems to be, it would help attract better coaches. However, USD has hired 5 big three coaches since moving to DI who have been excellent hires on paper and on the field/court. Men's basketball, 2 women's basketball coaches, and 2 football coaches. They've hired an athletic director that is hitting it out of the park from what I can tell. Each hire is better than the last, IMO. This can't be dumb luck. They've done it with different athletic directors as well, so it isn't unique to a special athletic director.

What do single contracts look like at SDSU? Our coaches are some of the longest tenured in all of DI. Since moving to DI, we have hired an amazing athletic director and a school president with a strong enough reputation to sit on the board of directors for one of the most influential corporations in the world (although some might argue that is not actually good).

Could the 1 year contract law be one instance where "backwards" South Dakota actually has it right? What real problem would multi-year contracts solve? What am I missing?

[OldHare]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

As stated earlier about the article Zimmer printed today in the Argus, 350 applied for the safety coach position. 1 year contracts are not limiting interest from those candidates.

[trueblue]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

IMO there will always be coaches who are looking to move up. If we were hiring and firing (letting go) coaches left and right, then it would be a problem. I think SDSU (and USD for that matter) has a track record of allowing coaches who have proven they do things the right way the chance to work through a difficult season or two. Even in a sport like softball, where there has been turnover, looks like we have a good coach now.

[joeboo22]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

As stated earlier about the article Zimmer printed today in the Argus, 350 applied for the safety coach position. 1 year contracts are not limiting interest from those candidates.

My understanding is most assistant coaches are under 1 year contracts anyways all across NCAA. I'd argue with the low pay scale that 1 year contracts allows for more coaches to consider applying especially for the assistant gigs. If it doesn't work, if I don't like Brookings if the pay ain't quite what I thought it'd be, then I can leave.

And I thought under 100K could sign multi year contracts (up to 3 years I believe). (Not that it happens)

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

As stated earlier about the article Zimmer printed today in the Argus, 350 applied for the safety coach position. 1 year contracts are not limiting interest from those candidates.

While it seems like a lot, its hard to say if 350 applicants is good or not. Would Augie or USF get the same number for a safety coach opening? Would NDSU have 800 applicants for a similar position? There are probably thousands of graduate assistants across the country who would apply for that kind of job, I would think. I'm not really saying anything, but a seemingly large number doesn't mean a lot.

According to JoeBoo, multi-year contracts don't apply to assistants anyway. So it is probably more of a head coach thing. I think the argument for head coaches might be that they don't really apply for a job, the school/consultant puts out feelers into a pool of interesting candidates?

[MontanaRabbit]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

While it seems like a lot, its hard to say if 350 applicants is good or not. Would Augie or USF get the same number for a safety coach opening? Would NDSU have 800 applicants for a similar position? There are probably thousands of graduate assistants across the country who would apply for that kind of job, I would think. I'm not really saying anything, but a seemingly large number doesn't mean a lot.

According to JoeBoo, multi-year contracts don't apply to assistants anyway. So it is probably more of a head coach thing. I think the argument for head coaches might be that they don't really apply for a job, the school/consultant puts out feelers into a pool of interesting candidates?

Did you read the article?

[OldHare]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

It would seem that putting out feelers might be a problem for those coaches under contract. It may not be true, but it would seem that the employer in those cases involving someone under contract would require a waiver to engage those coaches. Also, 350 candidates would require a bunch of screening to filter to a level which would make the interview cut. 200 candidate resumes arrived on the first day.
If we are going to refine this thread to include head coaches only, we might put this on hold since there is not many head positions open in Brookings right now. Also, the legislature is in progress and that is the first step to actually address a concern over how the universities handle coaching contracts.

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

Did you read the article?

Yes, what is the point of your question?

I assume it is related to only one position being "advertised."

The point being, even with documented low pay, SDSU doesn't seem to have any problem finding good assistant coach candidates.

Why would it be any different with head coaches and one-year contracts?

How would SDSU benefit if we had the ability to offer multi-year contracts to head coaches?

[jack power]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

My understanding is most assistant coaches are under 1 year contracts anyways all across NCAA. I'd argue with the low pay scale that 1 year contracts allows for more coaches to consider applying especially for the assistant gigs. If it doesn't work, if I don't like Brookings if the pay ain't quite what I thought it'd be, then I can leave.

And I thought under 100K could sign multi year contracts (up to 3 years I believe). (Not that it happens)

At the FBS level multi-year contacts for assistants are pretty common place. I recall an article about Wisconsin last year, where they said they were one of the few schools to still offer one year deals to assistants. I have no idea if FCS offers assistants muti-year deals.

[MontanaRabbit]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

Yes, what is the point of your question?

I assume it is related to only one position being "advertised."

The point being, even with documented low pay, SDSU doesn't seem to have any problem finding good assistant coach candidates.

Why would it be any different with head coaches and one-year contracts?

How would SDSU benefit if we had the ability to offer multi-year contracts to head coaches?

Quote from Stig:

“The safeties job opened first and we have over 350 applications, 200 that we got in just the first day,” the coach said. “So the other two we haven’t even advertised, we’ve just done it by word of mouth. We have a lot of really good candidates. We’re excited.”

After reading the above quote do you still question whether 350 applicants is good?

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

It would seem that putting out feelers might be a problem for those coaches under contract. It may not be true, but it would seem that the employer in those cases involving someone under contract would require a waiver to engage those coaches. Also, 350 candidates would require a bunch of screening to filter to a level which would make the interview cut. 200 candidate resumes arrived on the first day.
If we are going to refine this thread to include head coaches only, we might put this on hold since there is not many head positions open in Brookings right now. Also, the legislature is in progress and that is the first step to actually address a concern over how the universities handle coaching contracts.

I'm making a lot of assumptions here:

-School needs a coach.
-School hires consulting firm to aid in search.
-Consulting firm contacts agents.
-Agents contact coaches.
-Agents let consulting firm know if their coach would be interested.
-Consulting firm lets school know who's interested.
-School narrows list to x number of candidates.

At this point, the coach hasn't talked to another school. Now is when a coach would ask for a waiver if required, and interview. By the time the school actually talks to the coach, they aren't a candidate or applicant. They are a finalist. A school that denies a finalist an opportunity to interview could get a worse reputation than one that only offers 1 year contracts.

An interesting read on how coaches are hired these days (article is actually from 3 years ago): http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bask...lege-athletics

[SF_Rabbit_Fan]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

Quote from Stig:

“The safeties job opened first and we have over 350 applications, 200 that we got in just the first day,” the coach said. “So the other two we haven’t even advertised, we’ve just done it by word of mouth. We have a lot of really good candidates. We’re excited.”

After reading the above quote do you still question whether 350 applicants is good?

Apply this logic to teacher pay in South Dakota and watch heads explode. Numbers are relative, and its hard to judge good vs. bad without a comparison.

The number of applicants by itself isn't a strong indicator of how desirable a job is.

With that being said, it sounds like we have enough applicants to get a pool of good candidates. At the end of the day, that's what matters.

[jack power]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

Yes, what is the point of your question?

I assume it is related to only one position being "advertised."

The point being, even with documented low pay, SDSU doesn't seem to have any problem finding good assistant coach candidates.

Why would it be any different with head coaches and one-year contracts?

How would SDSU benefit if we had the ability to offer multi-year contracts to head coaches?

I think if we were competing with another school for a head coach, being able to offer multi-year deals would be beneficial.

That said, i'm of the opinion that one-year deals for head coaches aren't a big problem. I would be curious to get our main head coaches opinion on one year deals for their assistants. I think Nagy has only had two assistants leave since becoming a full-fledged D1 program. I know neither one left because of the one year contracts. I don't know about AJ's staff. Stig would be the one to get an opinion from because he has the most coaches in the football program.

[filbert]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

Honestly, I think overall quality of the program, and ability to offer competitive salary levels both count a whole lot more than multi-year contracts, especially for assistant coaches.

I think most coaches understand that they're effectively on year-to-year employment engagements anyway.

The only thing multi-year contracts would do for SDSU that I can see would be increase the cost of firing a coach that wasn't working out. I really don't see it as being something that would be a deal-breaker for bringing in that one special coach who will put a SDSU athletic program over the top.

If we were a Power 5 conference school, or even in FBS, I might change my opinion, but I really don't see it as being a particularly big issue, especially at SDSU, which historically (imho) has tended to favor more rather than less stability in coaching positions.

[Nidaros]

Re: Multi-Year Contracts

I don't know beans about South Dakota law, but it seems one year contracts are uniform requirement for all state employees. How you would change the law to make exceptions seems to be a legislative matter, at least to my way of thinking. Our legislature seems to think status quo and trying to get this type of change might take some doing. There is no harm of discussing pros and cons of multi-year contracts, but the reality is that we are stuck with one year deals until there is a change in the law. I don't think SDSU or USD are in the data base at Parker & Associates.