According to yesterday’s Washington Post, university sources believe a buyout of Ralph Friedgen’s contract might be possible.
Friedgen has two years left on his contract; buying him out would cost more than $4 million. The story doesn’t say they’re going to fire him, it just says this buyout figure won’t prevent them from pulling the trigger if that’s what they decide to do in the offseason.
I think it should.
No one’s happy with his performance this year as coach. I can’t believe we’re staring down the barrell of the first 10-loss season in school history. That’s a pretty lonely mountain right there. Ron Vanderlinden never lost 10 games. We’ve had our issues with recruiting (obviously a coaching issue), but we’re better than 2-9. And this is not the first year the Fridge has lamented that he’s lost his players (another obvious coaching problem). None of these things are positive. So what are they supposed to do?
I’ll tell you what: they hunker down, hold their cards, and take their medicine. Now is not the time to pull off the Mariah Carey Memorial Just Go Away Buyout. The university, as with many state institutions, is in dire financial straits. The school has slashed the athletic department budget to help address the shortfall. The state just made a bunch of severe cuts, which includes a $7 million reduction in financial aid for college students, and transferred millions more out of the University System of Maryland budget to plug other holes. Hundreds of students demonstrated a few weeks ago after a top diversity officer was laid off. They are destroying some valuable green space on campus to build more buildings.
And this is before we mention that the university was “forced” to lay off or eliminate 175 job positions over the summer. Presumably, these were not jobs that command seven-figure salaries and golden parachute buyout clauses. I have friends who work for UM who report taking mandatory furloughs and working in severely understaffed offices. Maybe ask them how that $4 million could be put to better use.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but elsewhere around the state, other painful cuts are also happening. A hospital is closing. Other services are suffering real setbacks. There’s no more fat to trim, so they’re amputating limbs. All told, the state has had to cut more than $1 billion out of the budget. All indications are that there is more to come.
Whether you agree with the specific cuts or not, this is the reality we’re in. What will people think if the school claims it can’t afford to keep its top diversity officer, but then pays Coach Friedgen $4 million just to not coach the football team anymore? If they do buy him out, it’s clear that they can’t just absorb that money. Other cuts will have to be made. Where will those come from? Student aid again? The other sports teams again? Will they build a Chipotle on McKeldin Mall?
Of course, it all comes down to dollars. Word is the school fell $600,000 short of its goal on football season ticket sales, to say nothing of single ticket costs, concessions, and the like. If they think any future Fridge team is going to be this bad, and might translate to enough lost revenue to justify the cost of the buyout, so be it. I’ll look forward to seeing the analysis. But I don’t see that happening. That’s a lot of unsold tickets. A lot of uneaten hot dogs.
So I say keep him. They’re 66-49 during his tenure. That’s not terrible. And yes, he’s on a bit of a downslope lately, and he’s 63, and he calls crazy plays, and this and that. But we can hang with him, can’t we? Remember the Medifast thing? How that made us all believe again? We can get back there. We literally can’t afford anything less.
(Photo credit: Brant Sanderlin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
I love the Fridge. He’s my man. If it were up to me, I’d say let him play out his two years and retire. However, this season has been terrible, and the alumni and boosters seem to have run out of patience.
From a financial perspective, if we look at Friedgen’s contract as a sunk cost, the question becomes whether the buyout will attract more profit over the next two years than it costs to pay a new head coach. I don’t see how that is possible. A $600,000 shortfall in ticket sales is virtually nil considering the recession and the fact that it represents only 3,000 tickets per game. You’d have to justify the value of the new coach’s salary in an uptick in football profit (not revenue) over the next two years based on the idea that fans are going to start buying more tickets and jerseys because of a favorable outlook on the team’s future performance.
The only way a new coach would make that big of a bottom line impact is if you get a marquee head coach to come into town. If Maryland announced tomorrow that they bought out Ralph Friedgen and are replacing him with Jon Gruden, then I could see a buyout paying off financially. Short of that, I sincerely doubt Byrd Stadium will start selling out until unemployment turns around.
I’m sure the pressure is mounting on the athletic department because of their poor decision to perform a major stadium upgrade right in time for the Great Recession to hit. The timing of this terrible season seems to coincide with many poor decisions regarding the direction of the football program. I’d like to see Ralph stay and see if can turn it around with a healthy and more experienced team next year, but I believe that politics will trump reason in this case. Somebody has to hang for this. I guaruantee you it won’t be Debbie Yow.
Good article and good comment from terphed. One thing as well that Terphed didn’t look into was how much of that drop in season ticket sales was the result of the team being bad verses the economy. I’d say the economy has a lot more to do with it. I didn’t renew my tickets because I’m getting married soon and really couldn’t justify it, not because the team was doing or expected to be bad. It will be interesting to see how sales do next year if Fridge is still here…
Dave, I completely agree. It would be interesting to find out how they forecast their football revenues. Did that $600K shortfall come from a forecast that took the recession into account? If I didn’t have a day job I’d do some more digging on that. I think it’s safe to say that a 3000 ticket per game shortfall could represent a margin of error in the forecast. Maybe the recession affected ticket sales more than they originally anticipated. It certainly affected sales of their new luxury suites more than they anticipated.
Update: Now I’m reading that a few of the big boosters might be passing the hat to get enough for a Fridge buyout. You’d think he was Tom Cable or something.
Update #2: The university board is now basically ruling out the buyout. Rightfully so, and good for them. So the only real buyout option is buying him out with funds from rich boosters and donors. That would be weird and illogical, and I just don’t see it happening. I think Ralph is here til the end of his contract or the recession, whichever comes first.
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