RALEIGH -- Smedes York, who chairs the committee that will recommend a new N.C. State athletic director, has said that the school will offer a salary that will be "competitive" with those of athletic directors at other ACC schools.
If that's the case, having Lee Fowler step down with three years left on his contract and hiring a replacement will be a costly process for the university. N.C. State is paying Fowler $280,000 a year through September 2013.
Parker Executive Search, a talent recruiting firm based in Atlanta, is charging N.C. State $75,000 to help find a replacement. And if the university pays Fowler's replacement the ACC average salary of $357,936 a year, that will represent an increase of $77,936 per year more than Fowler made.
Fowler's salary of $280,000 and his total compensation of $400,560 both rank ninth among 12 ACC athletic directors in 2009-10, according to conference salary survey data provided by N.C. State in accordance with a public records request by The News & Observer.
William Friday, founding co-chair of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said the cost of the Fowler decision is symptomatic of overall escalating athletic spending that concerns him.
"What you're talking about all of a sudden is a salary item that's in excess of a half a million dollars a year," said Friday, who was head of the UNC system from 1956 to 1986.
"That's the kind of thing that cumulatively speaking will drag sports down before it's through. No one is putting the brakes on it anywhere that I can see, and this is not a hypothetical question. It's just as real as tomorrow. How in the world is this going to be paid for?"
College athletic director salaries have soared in recent years. Maryland's Debbie Yow is the longest-tenured current ACC athletic director whose salary is public, exceeded in years in office only by Wake Forest's Ron Wellman.
Yow, who's from Gibsonville, was hired in 1994 for a salary of $130,000, according to a Baltimore Sun report. Now her salary is $382,575, according to the university's budget for fiscal year 2010.
That's a 194 percent increase. Over the same period, the inflation rate was 47 percent according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator. North Carolina athletic director Dick Baddour's salary has increased 84 percent to $295,000 compared with 31 percent inflation since 1999.
Nonetheless, Baddour's salary is relatively small by ACC athletic director standards, ranking just eighth. And the ACC is low on the overall compensation scale compared with some other conferences. Average salaries of athletic directors in the Big Ten ($420,455) and Big 12 ($435,268) exceed that of the ACC; salaries of other conferences weren't available.
Mike Cleary, executive director of the National Association of College Directors of Athletics, said pay for athletic directors has been pushed higher in part because college coaches' salaries have skyrocketed as well.
"Trust me, they earn them," Cleary said of ADs' salaries. "They're 24/7 jobs, and that phone call in the middle of the night is never good. Nothing good happens after midnight in a job like that."
When Cleary became executive director of NACDA 45 years ago, the landscape was vastly different. He said athletic directors often also served as directors of the physical education departments at their colleges and universities.
Now Division I-A athletic directors are thought of as CEOs of corporations with budgets of at least tens of millions of dollars.
The University of Michigan, one of the nation's largest programs, even hired former Dominos Pizza CEO Dave Brandon to run its athletic program.
Brandon, a former Michigan football player, reportedly took a pay cut of 84 percent to work for his alma mater in a decision that obviously wasn't motivated by money.
"There wasn't a lot of hesitation," Brandon said. "I love the university. My experience as a student-athlete at Michigan really opened up the doors that have given me the opportunities that allowed me to be successful."
At a reported $525,000 in salary, Brandon still is handsomely compensated. So are his colleagues throughout the nation.
The average 2009-10 total compensation (salary plus additional income) for athletic directors was $481,159 in the ACC, $500,743 in the Big Ten and $543,049 in the Big 12.
In the long run, paying a higher salary to a new athletic director actually could have some financial benefit for N.C. State. Donors who had stopped giving to the school might give again because the athletic department is heading in a different direction.
Alumnus Matt Kinney (class of '98) sent an e-mail to chancellor Randy Woodson the afternoon that Fowler's separation was announced.
"As promised, I just rejoined the Wolfpack Club," Kinney wrote in an e-mail provided to The News & Observer after a public records request.
Kinney had vowed not to donate to the Wolfpack Club until Fowler's tenure ended.
Nonetheless, the huge salaries that athletic directors command are just one part of the high cost of college athletics that concerns Friday. He calls himself "a Lee Fowler fan." He said he's sorry Fowler was forced to step down and is willing to have Fowler use him as a reference when he searches for another job.
But whether or not Friday had personal feelings for Fowler, he would find the financial cost of Fowler's ouster worrisome.
"What is really manifesting itself," Friday said, "not only in this but in everything else you see, is this business of financing college sports is out of control."
