If UNC extending Roy Williams’ contract through 2020 – with a hefty compensation bump – doesn’t speak to the confidence Carolina has about men’s basketball avoiding serious sanctions from the NCAA, then what else can it do?
The Tar Heels don’t want another washout recruiting year while the NCAA process grinds to an interminable conclusion. That Williams and any of his players were not cited in the recent Notice of Allegations and the basketball program was not charged with “academic fraud” has left experts who have studied the NCAA for decades convinced any sanctions against UNC men’s hoops will be light.
In other words, no past victories or championships vacated and no future post-season bans coming. There is no way on God’s green earth that Carolina would have extended Williams if it believed anything to the contrary. Remember, Butch Davis was whacked because he hired John Blake who violated NCAA rules galore.
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Williams already lost one 5-star recruit, Kinston’s Brandon Ingram to Duke, over the uncertainty before the NOA came out. Three of the top ten seniors from the high school class of 2016 are from North Carolina – 6-10 Harry Giles (#1) from Winston-Salem; 6-1 Dennis Smith, Jr. (#4) from Fayetteville; and 6-8 Edrice Adebayo (#8) from Pinetown – and all have been offered scholarships by Williams, who can now walk into their homes with more confidence than he had last year when he could barely get anyone to come visit the campus.
Of course, Williams can’t guarantee any of the recruits anything before the Committee on Infractions passes judgment, but Ol’ Roy will be armed with enough documentation that compares Carolina’s NOA to, say, Syracuse’s and NCAA precedent in similar cases that should offset rival recruiters who spend more time talking trash about the Tar Heels than they do pushing their own programs.
That, and his long-term contract extension, should help convince recruits who have UNC high on their list to at least wait until the spring signing period (as Ingram did), by which time the whole NCAA mess should finally be over and done with.
UNC has until August 20 to respond to the Notice of Allegations, and the NCAA has 60 days to respond to the response. That moves us into late October. Then the Committee on Infractions hearing must be scheduled, after which it takes 6-8 weeks for the COI to render its decision. So Carolina should know its fate before the end of the 2016 season and well before the April signing period commences.
Williams has said he would like to coach “6 to 10 more years” and this contract extension brings him to a month shy of his 70th birthday. So he could go even longer. That is not old for coaches these days. Jim Boeheim is already 70. Mike Krzyzewski is 68 and, of course, the ageless Larry Brown is 74 and still fielding contending teams at SMU.
The contract itself, not counting bonuses, looks to be worth more than $2.5 million right now, including what Williams gets from Nike and for his radio and TV shows from Learfield. Keep the team’s APR (Academic Progress Rate) above 975 and just make the NCAA Tournament and that’s another 100k. Win it all and ol’ Roy’s cumulative bonus could max out at $925,000. Including escalators through 2020, Williams will be making well north of $3 million by then, plus bonuses.
If this makes you want to vomit, it is about half of what John Calipari and Rick Pitino earn and not even one-third of what the King of the World takes home from Duke. I agree, it’s an obscene income for the profession, but it’s also the market value for Hall of Fame coaches and, believe it or not, Williams is still at the low end of that particular scale.
As we all know, Ol’ Roy is a good old boy from the mountains who, upon getting the head job at Kansas, kidded that he was making more money than he thought they printed. When he returned to UNC, he told Dick Baddour that he did not want to go backward, meaning just pay him what he was making at KU. That was 12 years ago, and coaches salaries have really gotten out of hand since then.
Making two million and living a pretty frugal lifestyle, Williams only paid attention to his competitors when their deals were all printed up in a USA Today chart or some of his coaching buddies told him he was way behind guys who have never been to a single Final Four (Roy has seven), let alone won two national championships. The Memphis coach, Josh Pastner, was making more than Williams before this latest raise. I know, Josh who?
So as I’ve debated with some people, including faculty members, who believe the whole college athletic thing is out of control, we’re not sure how we got to where we are in Division I. But we’re here, and to be competitive on the field and court, you have to stay competitive in every other way, as well.
[NOTE to the Wolfies who read this site more than their own: Before you start upchucking about taking easy classes to stay competitive, check what kind of cow-dung courses some of your jocks take.]
A friend said recently that last year Williams was recruiting with both hands tied behind his back, and this year it will be only one hand tied. Hopefully, if the timing works out and the recruits agree to wait, not-so-poor Ol’ Roy will be free at last in plenty of time to reload for his next run.
“Remember, Butch Davis was whacked because he hired John Blake who violated NCAA rules galore.”
Don’t you mean Davis hired John Blake, whom the NCAA vetted and approved before he was hired?