The University of Missouri gave football coach Gary Pinkel a $650,000 pay hike last week, despite recently taking drastic measures — including imposing a hiring freeze — to combat the system’s financial woes, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
As the newspaper tells it …
Around noon, Chancellor Brady Deaton held a news briefing to outline how a university saddled with a hiring freeze will decide which critical positions it can afford to fill.
“We are entering this period of economic uncertainty, unprecedented in our lifetimes,” Deaton wrote in an e-mail to faculty and staff. And he told reporters, “We’re going to be doing more with less.”
Except, that is, for the football team.
About two hours later, the Board of Curators met in closed session and approved what amounts to a 35 percent — or $650,000 — raise for Gary Pinkel, the campus’ successful football coach. Pinkel’s new $2.5 million compensation package makes him the third-highest paid coach in the Big 12, the athletic conference in which Mizzou competes.
Despite the lousy timing, not to mention the enormity of the raise, faculty members seem to be taking the news in stride:
MU’s Faculty Council Chairman Tom Phillips had a more measured response on Tuesday. He said he doesn’t link the financial strains on the university’s academic side to an athletic budget that is largely self supporting.
Chad Moller, the athletic department’s spokesman, said the $48 million athletics budget — which is the source of Pinkel’s salary — comes primarily from ticket sales, merchandising, Big 12 television revenue, bowl game appearances and private donors.
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader: