UofI new AD

[wiu712]

Lovie Smith signed a six-year contract for $21 million with annual payments of $2 million in both 2016 and 2017, jumping to $3 million in 2018, $4 million in 2019, and $5 million in both 2020 and 2021. He also has opportunities for incentives related to the team’s academic and athletic achievements.

This contract makes him the highest-paid public employee in the state of Illinois.

This raises a lot of questions about the athletic department’s continued spending of funds while the university faces state budget cuts and students are without MAP grants.

When former athletic director Mike Thomas was dismissed on Nov. 9 under the “without cause” separation clause of his contract, he was entitled to receive a $2.5 million buyout of his contract, money that came from the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics budget.

Buyouts totaling approximately $1.36 million for Cubit ($985,00) and his son, offensive coordinator Ryan Cubit ($361,000), were also issued following their dismissals Saturday morning, per their contracts.

UIUC's athletic department has now allocated or disbursed more than $11.4 million since November 2011 to pay coaches and athletic directors to no longer work for the university — including the dismissal of the Cubits.

Lovie has never been a college head coach. And he has been away from the college game for 21 years.

You also have to wonder how long he will stay at UIUC should he be offered an NFL position.

[ST_Lawson]

Lovie Smith signed a six-year contract for $21 million with annual payments of $2 million in both 2016 and 2017, jumping to $3 million in 2018, $4 million in 2019, and $5 million in both 2020 and 2021. He also has opportunities for incentives related to the team’s academic and athletic achievements.

This contract makes him the highest-paid public employee in the state of Illinois.

This raises a lot of questions about the athletic department’s continued spending of funds while the university faces state budget cuts and students are without MAP grants.

When former athletic director Mike Thomas was dismissed on Nov. 9 under the “without cause” separation clause of his contract, he was entitled to receive a $2.5 million buyout of his contract, money that came from the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics budget.

Buyouts totaling approximately $1.36 million for Cubit ($985,00) and his son, offensive coordinator Ryan Cubit ($361,000), were also issued following their dismissals Saturday morning, per their contracts.

UIUC's athletic department has now allocated or disbursed more than $11.4 million since November 2011 to pay coaches and athletic directors to no longer work for the university — including the dismissal of the Cubits.

Lovie has never been a college head coach. And he has been away from the college game for 21 years.

You also have to wonder how long he will stay at UIUC should he be offered an NFL position.

These are all valid points, but you do have to remember that U of I's Athletics has revenue sources that the smaller schools generally don't have access to. They receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-$45 million from the Big 10's TV contract. In addition, hiring a "big name" like Lovie Smith will greatly help in ticket sales...apparently in the 24 hours after the hiring was announced, they sold over 900 season ticket packages and between that and donations, brought in ~$1 million in revenue. It's hard to say how many of those 900 would have bought season tickets anyway, or how many of the people donating would have donated some (or all) of what they did donate anyway, but they essentially covered half of his $2 million 2016 salary just this last weekend.

Also, Illinois was probably able to get some sort of break on the first two years due to Smith still being paid by Tampa Bay for the next 2 years. UIUC students and the school as a whole are asked the support the athletics department the least (by far) of any of the state schools in Illinois (4% of their athletics budget...next best was Chicago State and Eastern with 27% of their athletics budget subsidized...for the time period of 2009-2013). So really, they're not playing with "student" or "state" money...it's Big 10 money and the football program's money.

Now you could make a case that if they have that extra money, they should be giving it back to the university (some other big schools do), but they don't really have to and I highly doubt that any of the money going to paying their current and former coaches is coming from the university, the state, or the students.

[ST_Lawson]

Haven't heard much about how the change will affect Jeff Hecklinski yet. He was hired in December as the Illini Tight Ends and Special Teams coach.
There have been some names tossed around for some of the other coaching spots, with a few mentions of existing coaches possibly retaining their positions (like D-Coordinator Mike Phair).
A couple of spots have been hired, but nothing for what Hecklinski was hired for yet, so we'll see.

Here's him on twitter if you want to keep an eye on what he's up to: https://twitter.com/JeffHecklinski

EDIT - Looks like we have the answer. As expected, sounds like his stint at U of I was a short one.
[tweet]708359818696794112[/tweet]