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Rio Salado College PA's/Online Instructors General CORT WAREHOUSE/DRIVER Construction Komatsu Equipment Co Mechanic Education Assessment Technology, Inc Social Studies Content Writer General CORT Warehouse Supervisor FootballOpinion by Greg Hansen: Firing AD would be one costly maneuverTucson, Arizona | Published: 10.23.2007
Jim Livengood's contract runs through June 30, 2010, with a base salary of $380,000. In some years, based on incentives, Livengood has earned as much as $62,700 in bonuses.
The incentives? Livengood will receive a week's pay, about $7,500, if his football team wins its final four games and plays in the postseason. We assume Arizona's athletic director has not factored that bonus into his Christmas-spending plans.
For schools in BCS football conferences, Livengood is probably below the average salary of his peers, many of which exceed $500,000 in salary. At $1.2 million per year, Florida's Jeremy Foley is believed to be the nation's highest-paid AD.
The point here is that college presidents no longer can fire their athletic directors any easier, and without financial complications, than they can dismiss their contract-protected football coaches.
If Livengood is discharged for creating a mess of Arizona's football program, the school must pay him his full contract in 2008, 75 percent of it in 2009 and half of it in 2010. That's roughly $855,000.
Those hopeful that UA president Robert Shelton will fire both Livengood and football coach Mike Stoops must first understand the financial reality. It would be preferable to nurse the football team to health, stick with Stoops and hope the whole operation can be salvaged.
If it can be salvaged.
Those who cry for Shelton to clean house, here are some decimal points to remember: firing both Livengood and Stoops at season's end would cost the school close to $3 million.
It would then be Shelton's responsibility to find that money, either from donors, from a general budget or via an installment plan from the fragile athletic budget. Hiring a new football coach and a new AD would almost surely require more, per year, than the current Stoops and Livengood contracts.
Total cost of cleaning house: Start at $4 million and go north.
Yet Livengood found enough money to release football coaches Dick Tomey and John Mackovic.
"Those accounts are paid in full,'' Livengood told me.
Could he whack Stoops, his third firing of a football coach in seven years, and keep his job?
There is little or no precedent for a BCS school's athletic director firing three football coaches.
"I've never heard of that,'' said Tucsonan Joe Kearney, former athletic director at Michigan State and Washington and ex-commissioner of the Western Athletic Conference. "I believe Jim is one of the leading athletic directors in college sports, but I also understand the importance of making the right choices with your big-revenue coaching hires. I hope Jim can survive this.''
Ex-LSU athletic director Joe Dean hired (and fired) Curley Hallman and Gerry DiNardo. Yet Dean was permitted to hire a third coach, the acclaimed Nick Saban, and retired with his respect intact in 2001.
Furthermore, two former Pac-10 athletic directors hired and fired back-to-back football coaches without punitive action. Cal's Dave Maggard did so with Roger Theder and Joe Kapp in the 1980s and then hit a home run with Bruce Snyder.
Stanford's recently re-assigned athletic director, Ted Leland, left his AD post after hiring Buddy Teevens and Walt Harris. Both coaches were dismissed. At his request, Leland, who was untouchable after winning 11 NCAA Director's Cup championships, became an alumni-relations executive at the school.
Livengood is not untouchable, but his UA job performance, 1994-2007, is laudable.
His department's revenue has grown from $16.3 million to $40.2 million. His payroll has almost doubled, from $5.7 million to about $10.4 million. He has been a facility-builder, a get-it-done dynamo, with few peers. Ironically, he is in the design stage of enclosing the north end of Arizona Stadium and, perhaps, relocating the entire football plant there.
And then his football team fell apart, 2-6, with four impossibly difficult games remaining. Moreover, he is working under a relatively new president who is not as chummy and same-page oriented as former UA president Peter Likins and Livengood were.
"For better or worse, the evaluation of an athletic director begins with W's," said Kearney. "That's inescapable.
"The second part is the ethical behavior of the department and the athletic director. The third part is its economic health. Overriding all of it is the school's academic performance.''
Until his football team went bust in 2001, Livengood ran the Good Ship Jim. In recent years, his department's graduation rates, near the bottom of all BCS schools, have embarrassed the university. The UA's standings in the Director's Cup, once a top-10 staple, have hit record lows.
And, unlike 2003, in the Mackovic crisis, when Lute Olson announced public support for Livengood, the two clashed over the removal of Jim Rosborough from the basketball staff. Their relationship is strained.
"Yes,'' Livengood told me in July. "That's true.''
As a result, barring an unexpected winning streak, Livengood appears vulnerable for the first time.
And who says Saturday's UA-Washington game is meaningless?
● Contact Greg Hansen at ghansen@azstarnet.com or 573-4362.
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