Tx high school football coaching salary....

My high school (Temple, Tx - population 50k, 5A school) has a stadium that seats 11,500. Our district averages 8800 seats at each school. I doubt that football clears a profit, but you should consider that most of these big salaries are at 5A schools with big houses. There are 10 schools in Tx (some shared in metros) that seat 16500 or more, for context. http://www.texasbob.com/stadium/cap_index.php

 

It will vary, depending on the size of the district of course. About 1.4 to 1.8%.

 

I actually think it's the same in Texas, unless the HC is also the AD. Which is the case prob 90% of the time.

 

The only reason having a (slightly) higher salary for a football coach (AD issues notwithstanding) seems reasonable is that, as someone else pointed out, football coaches actually can and do get fired.

I'd be willing to pay teachers 80k a year if you could fire the worst 10% every year, Jack Welsh style.

 

Assistants can make anywhere from $8,000 - $20,000 based on the school, experience, and position (i.e. an offensive coordinator > quarterback coach). You are expected to teach on top of that, so you do receive a teacher's salary because coaching is 100% overtime work. You're going to put in 50-60 hours a week teaching alone and then tack on working an extra 4 hours a day coaching, plus maybe 5 hours for film on Saturday, and maybe 3-8 hours on Sunday scouting opposition.

Head coach is a different ball game. A lot of head coaches are either the AD or assistant A.D. on top of coaching. There is a state law that says the superintendent must be the highest salary person in the district. Some schools get around this by paying their coach $1 less than the superintendent. A prime example of that would be Todd Dodge from before he was at UNT.

 

Coming from a coach that works in the Dallas area for a team that made the 2nd round of the playoffs - that is entirely false.

I was expected to teach 135 students daily in 6 classes. On top of that making sure that they had a place to go during season if they needed tutoring.

I would frequently work from 6:30 am till 9pm at night Monday - Thursday. Gamedays would typically be 6:30 till whenever the last parent picked up their child on Friday night - could be midnight, could be 2am. One away game didn't get home till 4am. Yet I was back at it at 9am the next day.

Why? Because I love making a positive difference in these children's lives.

 

So do teachers.

 

Which is why I have no problem with coaches getting extra stipends. My thought though is that you should pay equal stipends for other additionally duties such as band director, choir director, academic team coach, yearbook sponsor, etc. that put in just as much extra time as coaches. My issue is when the football coach at a school gets a stipend that is significantly higher than other stipends.

(For example, when a coach of a football team that hasn't had a winning record in years has a stipend that is higher than the combined stipends of a head and assistant band director of a program that has competed on the national level recently, something is wrong. Especially when the two cars of those directors are two of the last three to leave the lot everyday, the other being the gifted/talented coordinator/elementary academic team coach's car.)

 

Yearbook, band director, choir director all end up being their own position though. The only football coach that ends up not having to teach extra on top of their coaching is typically the head coach, and that's because he ends up being the athletic director as well. The only thing I've seen that's close is working with the marching band and not as much off-season is needed (try working with summer conditioning / weight lifting and monitoring the volunteer 7-7, 5-4 drills, and whatever else the players want to do.

The head football coach at my school practically lives there in-season (he has installed cots, stove/microwave/refrigerator in the coaching facility) and out of season he's probably putting in about 60 hours a week.

 

That's good stuff - A huge salary makes that all better. Here in Oklahoma you have to teach if you are going to be a coach. As a wrestling coach, we do the same amount of work as well as 1-3 duals a week, weekend wrestling tournaments while still working with the feeder programs. we make an extra 6,000 a year before taxes. If all coaches are putting in this amount of work then they should all get the same type of money. I just read that the Union coach gets $90,000.00. Now I am sure the wrestling coach at Union Schools gets paid more than we did at McLain but I am sure that it is nowhere close to $90,000. My only point is that the payment should not be so lopsided. Every teacher that puts in extra time to make sure these kids succeed should be compensated for it - if the school can afford to pay those type a salaries. Everyone from the Band teacher - Science Club teacher to the football coach. Just because they happen to coach a sport that makes more money then any other does not make them better coaches/teachers so they should not get paid that much more than all the others.

Now I am not complaining because I realize that it is just a fact of life/rules of the jungle. I do not do it for the money - as a matter a fact I always made sure I was at the schools that good male teachers were needed the most and that would not be schools like Jenks and Union - they have plenty of good teachers there. I am needed in the neighborhoods that have no male role models, parental support, ect.... So I know for a fact I would never make that much money - we simply do not have it. It was just shocking to see high school coaches making more than doctors - I had no Idea people even expected to get paid that much.

 

When you get into the big 5A Texas HS Football teams scattered around the DFW Metroplex, the schools and school districts aren't just making money off ticket sales alone. They are marketing machines that generate lots of dough....Just like OU there are naming rights to stadiums, complexes, training centers, etc. They also collect checks off advertising from corporate sponsors. I'd imagine they also cut deals with equipment companies like Nike, Reebok, Under Armour, etc. There is also money to be made for the rights to broadcast the games on radio and in some cases national tv. There are also concession stands and in some cases vendor booths that are charged a fee so they they can set up and sell their own merchandise. All these go back to the school districts general fund, which helps pay for expenses district wide that may not be covered simply by tax payers money alone.

Then you also have booster clubs that do their own fund-raising and those funds can be directly applied to a schools athletic department as well.

All that money is generated as a result of a winning program. The best teams want the best coach to help keep them winning. To get the best coach comes at a price however, and thus their salary is higher. A coach with a winning program brings in money for the school and the school district plain and simple. It's the same as it is in the business world. You pay the employee that brings the company more money in the hopes that they will continue to bring in even more. English teachers don't bring in money and thus they are not paid as much. It has nothing to do with how many hours are put in, who works harder, who is the better educator, etc. It all has to do with money.

 

Own position or not, many of the classes a band director, choir director, or yearbook teacher teaches are not related to the after school part of the activity. For example, at my school, the yearbook advisor also is the high school academic team coach, and she teaches a full load of English classes. The two band directors between them have to cover the high school band, 7th grade band, 6th grade band, 5th grade music, high school choir, music appreciation, applied music, color guard, music theory, and jazz band (which is after school and not part of the schedule). Each of these classes has it's own unique lesson plan, and none of it save the high school band period and sometimes the color guard class applies to the after school hours for marching band. Just like the coach can't (or shouldn't) take up a social studies class game planning, the band director can't use beginning band time to arrange music for the high school band.

Now I don't doubt that there are coaches that put in time that is worth a bunch of money. My point is that other teachers put in as much time and are rewarded with just a fraction of the same money.

As for the time involved for marching band, bands in Oklahoma typically put in a bunch of work in the summer (of course, they are allowed to, whereas football is prohibited from practicing before a certain date). Doesn't change the fact that on a typical July day at my school the band and the directors are usually the only ones around.

 

I agree that high football coaching salaries are offensive to good teachers (many of whom put in just as much time as football coaches while receiving 1/3 of the pay; note oklaclarinet's post above).

Of course, most football coaches are teachers themselves. And most of them probably make the same coaching-stipend as coaches of other sports. And this is how it should be.

Still, I understand that there are schools that have very successful football programs which bring a lot of money back into the school. And this is great, but I think it's ludicrous that the school should invest highly in their football programs in a way that suggests superiority for its football program and its players.

Consider the 18,000 person stadium posted earlier in this thread: is it necessary, and is the school actually experiencing some sort of economic return (gain?) from that investment? I doubt it, and I think that is much more about football tradition and winning (technically meaningless) football games.

Schools need to remain unbiased, and the school needs to at least pretend that they care as much about the tuba player as they do the starting tail-back.

 

Not in Oklahoma, it's not. I am the head of the Social Studies Dept at out school. There are only 2 members of the staff in our department who are NOT coaches. All of our coaches are done with their teaching duties at lunch. As a result, all of the kids who need those subjects taught to them in the afternoon are divived up between the 2 of us who are not coaches.

I guess it depends on where you work, the size of your district, etc. I am only speaking from my own experieinces.

I teach six class periods a day, and teach 3 different subjects. I do that, then teach our alternative ed classes one night a week. I attend every football game and lead the student spirit section. I attend our school's basketball games, wrestling matches, baseball games, vocal music concerts, drama productions, etc.I have, in the past, kept stats for the football team to free up one more coach to be on the sidelines with the players. While attending all of these extracurricular activities, I am more than a spectator. I am expected to keep an eye on the students and to make sure no trouble develops. If it does, I handle it.

Do I get extra pay for all of that? No. I do it because I, too, care about my students and love making a positive difference in the lives of my kids. You see coach, it works both ways. Many non-coaching teachers put in a lot of hours outside the regular school day.

Personally, I wish they would adopt a merit pay system for teachers and an evaluation system that would allow the districts to weed out the bad teachers. Unfortuantely, the unions will do all within their powers to block such a move.

 

Again, there ain't no tuba player without football.

You think for one second that schools would spend any money on the Tuba were it not for football? No chance.

And do you think marching bands would have places to march if there was no football field? No chance.

The fact is people care about athletics. For whatever reason, our society prides itself on athletic achievement. No regular public school prides itself on having the best tuba players. But they do however advertise the state championships in athletics. Why? Because a majority of people care. It makes people want to live there and go there. Right or wrong, those are the facts.

 

Please explain the bold part. Are you saying Texas high school coaches don't have to be employed as a teacher in the high school district in which they coach?

 

They have to be employed by the school. A head coach can simply be the athletic director and not have to teach curriculum.

 

I agree that those are facts. But those facts don't necessarily legitimize 18,000 people stadiums and football coaches who make 4 times the salary of dedicated classroom teachers.

While other social-realities will place football players upon a pedestal (and that's fine; "it's just life," as they say), the school cannot actively take part in such cultural dogmatizing.

The football player is an important component of the school, but he is just as important as the tuba player or the kid who always wears black and skips out on pep-assemblies. It's a public school in a public space, and they all belong equally: school policy MUST reflect this notion.

 

Okay, yeah that is definitely true. I have a nephew who is head football coach and athletic director of a suburban high school outside of Houston. He has 35 coaches under him and has his own secretary and no longer teaches academic classes.
As many have stated, coaching football in Texas is very important to the culture here. I assume it is the same in Oklahoma. High school football coaches salaries have increased a lot compared to other classroom teachers but to me the amount college coaches make is a bigger story. Their salaries have gone through the ceiling imo. Wow. BIG money.

 

Grove City High School in Ohio. Canceled football. Still has band.

It all depends on the funding source. If I write a grant that allows me to fund equipment purchases for band, you bet. Band is actually cheap once you get past the overhead, and there are many foundations willing to donate monies for musical equipment purchases.

Football? Nope. If the team isn't winning and costs are increasing, football could get the axe, especially in poorer communities. Why? Football is expensive and schools are having a harder time funding it. Right now a lot of schools charge the students to join. If state supreme courts start banning such fees (which they should), watch out.

Schools began axing jv squads a long time ago.

Whether football helps or hinders a community's ability to elevate their kids to successful careers is arguable.

Pride is great, until you have no money.

I'm not sure what kind of person wants to visit or live in a community because its football team won the state title, but I'm sure he's a pretty interesting fellow.