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Florida Coastal Database of College Coaches Contracts

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

In December of 2006, I wrote a post titled, "Lawyers in Demand at University Athletic Departments?" At the 2006 Street & Smith's Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, NCAA president Myles Brand and other panelists were asked what they thought would be the most important story to follow in 2007, and they said "coaches' contracts". Brand added that "agents have the upper hand" now. In a separate interview, Brand also said the following: "Negotiations have become tougher, and there's a lot of competition for the best coaches. It might make sense for schools to have representation. They use outside counsel on other things."

As director of the Center for Law and Sports at Florida Coastal School of Law, I am pleased to announce the creation of the "Florida Coastal Database of College Coaches Contracts." The database houses detailed summaries of the pertinent provisions contained in the contract of each college coach within the "Big 6" conferences in football and the Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC conferences in men's basketball. The database contains a spreadsheet for each conference per sport, summarizing the material terms of each coach's contract at each school within the conference. Each spreadsheet contains separate tabs with specifics regarding term, base salary, bonuses, supplementary compensation, deferred compensation, guaranteed compensation, termination, liquidated damages/buyout and retirement.

We started the project in January of 2007, and it is an ongoing work in process in which we will be adding additional conferences as well as providing updates to accommodate new hires and contract extensions. I say "we" but I can't take any of the credit. This database is the culmination of the hard work of my student research assistants who are enrolled in our sports law certificate program. This project was created with two primary objectives: to provide students in the program with a valuable research and practical skills exercise, and to provide a resource for the collegiate athletic community. The spreadsheets are useful from the standpoint of providing an overview of various trends in the industry, as well as being able to compare and contrast at a glance the material terms of each coach's contract within each conference. The database will remain permanently linked on the blog under the heading, "Sports Law Resources".

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on January 26, 2008 (boomark / email).