Like a lot of people, it was easy for me to think that Mike Bohn was doing a horrible job as the Athletic Director for the University of Colorado. After considerable research, I can freely admit that I was wrong. Mike Bohn has been devoted to the university he loves and did as well as could be expected despite the lack of commitment from CU.
When one digs deep enough to find the true power structure behind CU athletics, the facts are that Mike Bohn was the best fundraiser that CU has ever had in the position and that the true bosses at CU (President Bruce Benson and Chancellor Phil DiStefano) want all the benefits of having a top notch athletic program while making none of the investments needed to achieve that goal.
Case in point: Mike Bohn had a salary of $310,000 per year. Some folks might say that 310k is a lot of money. However, those who hire athletic directors at major universities would say that Colorado was trying to get off cheap. Real cheap.
The true bosses at CU have been quoted as of late saying that CU needs someone in the AD position who can help us compete with the BIG BOYS of college athletics. Really? Are they willing to make the financial commitment to hire one of those people? Mike Bohn was the lowest paid athletic director in the Pac 12. And before that he was the lowest paid AD in the Big 12.
The average AD in the Pac-12 at the public schools is $534,000. Stanford and USC most likely pay much more than average, but as private schools they do not have to divulge their AD pay. Compared to CU's old conference, however, the typical Pac-12 school is certainly not among the big boys when it comes to AD pay. CU's old rivals in the Big 12 pay their Athletic Directors an average of $837,000 per year, which is closing in on 3 TIMES the amount that CU invests.
Jon Embree was paid $725,000 a year to be CU's head football coach. Compare that salary with the average Pac-12 rival coach of $2.29 MILLION or the pay enjoyed by Big 12 coaches of $2.76 MILLION. Embree's pay was less than the coaches of nationally renowned football powerhouses like Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette. Up in Fort Collins, their head coach pulled in almost double what Embree earned.
Not only did CU pay the head of the team for CU's traditionally only revenue generating sport less than a third of what other schools were paying their head coaches, Embree also had to foot the bill for bottled water for his staff. CU's illustrious leaders would not even pay for water? That made CU a much bigger joke around the country than lack of wins on the football field.
It has been said that Benson is a master of getting big donors to give to CU. If that is the case, why the hell is tuition going up at so many times the rate of inflation? Not only that, but CU has a long proud history of treating their students like an unwelcome burden. You guys ought to try being nice to students. Don't you idiots realize that it is the students of today who are the potential donors of tomorrow? If you want dividends in the way of donations in the future, you need to invest in students today. If you want your football program to fund all of your other sports, you need to invest in the program.
Everyone seems to know that the football program lost money this past year. Does that really surprise anyone? It shouldn't. The switch to the Pac-12 cost CU money. They had to pay to get out of the Big 12 and as a new member of the Pac-12 they only got ONE FOURTH of the television money that the other schools got, same as Utah. Next year, that goes up and CU's athletic program will once again be flush with money.
Mike Bohn worked tirelessly to get Colorado into the Pac-12. This was a very good thing, Most of CU's out of state students come from the west. The TV revenue that comes from the new conference is more than double what CU used to make in the Big 12.
Thanks to Mike Bohn and his hiring of Tad Boyle, Colorado now has another revenue generating sport in basketball. Not only do the B-Ball Buffs sell out the Events Center, they also earn big dollars by making it to the NCAA's Big Dance. Based on Boyle's coaching and the quality of his recruits, that will not change anytime soon. Under Bohn, Linda Lappe has rebuilt the Women's Basketball program almost to the point of its former glory under Acting AD Ceal Barry. Stories like this abound in CU athletics. A lot of the thanks for those successes rest with Mike Bohn.
Many forget that Mike Bohn came into his job as AD to rescue CU from a bad situation. The real and fabricated scandals around Gary Barnett were causing CU a great deal of embarrassment. Bohn did his best to mitigate the situation and fired Barnett. It needed to be done. Then, Bohn went out and hired the hottest coaching candidate in the country. When Dan Hawkins was hired away from Boise State, he was considered to be a great hire. His teams as head coach before CU were 93-22. Nobody predicted that Hawkins would go 19-39 at Colorado.
Then came the Embree hire. Following the dismissal of Hawkins, Bohn took the meager funds available to him from the Big Bosses at CU and hired an ex-Buff to revitalize the program. The commitment that CU showed Embree was as small as his pay, and Colorado dropped further and further away from their former glory. Two years in to an untenable position with little support from the university, Mike Bohn was forced to fire Jon Embree. Mike Bohn's handling of the firing of his third head coach gave everybody the impression that Bohn was to blame for all the woes of the football program. And the puppet masters pulling the strings behind the scenes, who also held the purse strings, did nothing to change that view.
Finally, Benson and DiStefano, with Bohn as the fall guy, decided to fire the guy who did more with less money than just about any AD in the country. How delusional are these folks? They sat quietly by and spoke of a "national search" for the new AD. More comically, they mentioned as possible candidates guys who already make significantly more money than Bohn. One guy mentioned makes more in interest on his investments every year than Bohn earned in eight years on the job. As he eloquently stated in letter to the Denver Post, he is NOT a candidate.
Well, the ball is now in the court of two guys who have never shown a commitment to CU athletics. Let's see how much money they are willing to spend on a new AD. One thing is certain, no matter who they hire, they will not have the same love and devotion to the Buffs as Mike Bohn did. At least they had the good sense to let Bohn hire Mike MacIntyre and actually pay him commensurate with his peers.
No comments:
Post a Comment