Football: UW Athletic Board committee approves policy to change pay dispersal to coaches

Chryst and others support a policy to change bonuses given to coaches

by Erik Helm

September 29, 2016

The personnel committee of the University of Wisconsin Athletic Board approved and recommended a policy that will more equally distribute pay to the coaching staff and assess coaching bonuses on the win total of their team.

The policy, suggested by head football coach Paul Chryst and submitted to the Full Athletic Board, involves two noticeable changes to the existing pay system: the scale that is used to determine bonuses based on post season play and the distribution of the bonuses among the coaches.

The bowl picture and the conference bowl obligations have changed considerably over the last couple years, Deputy Athletic Director Walter Dickey said.

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“Now the conference obligations are such that a variety of schools are going to have to go to a variety of bowls,” Dickey said. “Some schools are probably going to bowls better than their record and some are going to bowls worse than their record.”

To combat these rule problems, the committee voted to approve a change to the post season bonuses. That change will use a formula for bonuses that would not take into account the bowl a team played in, but instead a system that bases them on the number of games the team wins. Dickey said that the adjusted system of paying coaches for their wins and not on their bowl game will make it much more fair for all coaches.

The committee also discussed changes in the amount each coach earned for his/her bonus. In another proposal from Chryst, all of the current bonuses for a coaching staff will be combined and each bonus will receive an equal share of the lump sum of money available.

“Having talked to him, I know that his thought is that he wants to have probably 12 shares,” Dickey said. “The 12 shares would be 10 for the football coaches, so him plus nine assistants. The person that, quote-unquote, loses the most money here is Paul.”

The proposals surprise many, as athletic director Barry Alvarez has always had a strong position in giving head coaches the majority of the power in the program. A large part of the decision of former defensive coordinator Dave Aranda to leave for Louisiana State University was due to Alvarez’s refusal to pay an assistant more than Aranda was looking for.