We reported in June that Pete Carroll, USC’s erstwhile football coach, took home $4.1-million in compensation in 2008-9.
Make that $4.6-million.
As it turns out, Southern Cal made additional payments totaling $500,000 to a private corporation called Compete Inc., for “services performed” by Carroll that same year, according to tax records reviewed by The Chronicle. The amount was not included in the $4.1-million figure, which included base salary and other incentives.
Compete Inc. is registered in the state of Washington, where Carroll now resides, and lists him as its president.
It’s not clear where the $4.6-million puts Carroll among the nation’s biggest earners. In 2006-7, his $4,415,714 in total compensation made him the country’s highest-paid college employee, according to a Chronicle analysis.
Last year, Carroll left USC, where he had coached the Trojans since 2001, to take the head-coaching job of the Seattle Seahawks. Shortly after his departure, news broke of a major NCAA investigation of the university’s football and basketball programs. In June, the NCAA levied the stiffest sanctions in decades against Southern Cal.
Carroll was not directly implicated in the case, though the events in question all happened under his watch. The university, in the meantime, has appealed the penalties and hired a slew of athletics officials to clean up the mess.
8 Responses to An Extra $500,000 for Pete Carroll Brought His ’09 Pay Package to $4.6-Million
davi2665 - September 30, 2010 at 9:28 am
I am deafened by the silence from the usual CHE crowd that howls in protest at any president or provost making more than $200K. I guess it’s OK for a coach to make millions, even as tuition is raised for the financially hard-pressed students and budgets are slashed. A chance to cut is a chance to cure.
jennyztrojan - September 30, 2010 at 12:51 pm
NEWS FLASH! USC is a private school, thus their tuition is not as you put it-raised for the financially hard-pressed students nor are their budgets slashed. We are not affected by budget cuts that public schools must endure. In addition, the money that the football program brings in does give substantial funding options to students in the form of aid and scholarships. Has anyone looked into the income received by professors at USC? What about our Dean or Provost? USC is the largest private employer in the entire city of Los Angeles. This type of salary is not abnormal for this caliber of a university. Carroll got the job done and our football program brought a lot of money, recognition and support to our university. Thus, it was an investment well spent.
22250655 - September 30, 2010 at 3:44 pm
USC is certainly entitled to waste its money however it sees fit, but Jennyztrojan seems to have forgotten what universities are for. The professors are at least supposed to educate others and contribute to knowledge. Coaches have no such excuse for their existence. Eventually, even USC may have to consider what its basic mission is and ask if and how athletics excesses fit into that.
honestly - September 30, 2010 at 4:50 pm
22250655, respectfully, I believe that’s a pretty weak argument considering USC has climbed faster in the US News Rankings than any school, passing UCLA and now sitting just below UC Berkeley. A school can have its cake and eat it too when it’s not crippled by a state’s financial ineptitude (and I wish that weren’t the case for public schools). Your post assumes that a school with a profitable athletic budget, where football and men’s basketball earn all the profits that are then spent on the dozens of money-losing teams, is somehow impacting the level of academics. That’s not the case in this instance. Heck, just look at Stanford for another prime example –they’re always at the top of the Directors Cup standings (for best overall athletic department) and no one dares accuse them of doing so at the expense of academics.
42zing - September 30, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Let’s face reality. The players on BCS and many Division I football teams are merely hired help. The number of real students on any of those teams can be counted on one hand after a severeindustral accident. College football has degenerated into “my Hessians can beat your Hessians”. Don’t blame the players – the fault belongs to administrators and alumni foolish enough to buya personal seat license for the right to buy season tickets. Pete Carroll may be, actually, the best of a bad lot.
_perplexed_ - October 4, 2010 at 4:51 pm
It makes sense that Pete Carroll was the “country’s highest-paid college employee”. Surely no one was more important or comntributed more to the mission of higher education in this country. It is a far better thing to pay Mr. Carroll his due than to send a few thousand students to college.
ucucb - October 23, 2010 at 9:44 pm
$500,000 salary of public employee at University of California. UC Berkeley’s recent elimination of popular sports programs highlighted endemic problems in the university’s management. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians in Sacramento, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means.
A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Competent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him to provide data on problems and on what steps he was taking to solve them. Instead, every year Birgeneau would request a budget increase, the regents would agree to it, and the legislature would provide. The hard questions were avoided by all concerned, and the problems just piled up to $150 million….until there was no money left.
It’s not that Birgeneau was unaware that there were, in fact, waste and inefficiencies in the system. Faculty and staff have raised issues with senior management, but when they failed to see relevant action taken, they stopped. Finally, Birgeneau engaged some expensive ($3 million) consultants, Bain & Company, to tell him what he should have been able to find out from the bright, engaged people in his own organization.
From time to time, a whistleblower would bring some glaring problem to light, but the chancellor’s response was to dig in and defend rather than listen and act. Since UC has been exempted from most whistleblower lawsuits, there are ultimately no negative consequences for maintaining inefficiencies.
In short, there is plenty of blame to go around. But you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. An opportunity now exists for the UC president, Board of Regents, and California legislators to jolt UC Berkeley back to life, applying some simple check-and-balance management principles. Increasing the budget is not enough; transforming senior management is necessary. The faculty, students, staff, academic senate, Cal. alumni, and taxpayers await the transformation.
makewebsite12 - October 25, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Carroll got the job done and our football program brought a lot of money, recognition and support to our university. Thus, it was an investment well spent.