Give Ault credit... he does learn

Fresh from the RGJ - Nevada has a couple of new defensive coaches:

Nigel Burton and James Ward will join the Nevada football team as assistant coaches on the defensive side of the ball, head coach Chris Ault said Wednesday.

Burton is the Pack's new defensive coordinator, replacing Ken Wilson, who will remain with the program as Ault's associate head coach. Burton, who most recently was the cornerbacks coach at Oregon State, will also coaching the safeties.

Ward was the secondary coach at Colorado State and will coach cornerbacks at Nevada.

The particularly interesting part was this gem:

Burton, who was at Oregon State for five years, was ranked one of the top recruiters in the Pac-10 by rivals.com. He played collegiately for both Pacific and Washington.

"My excitement goes beyond the opportunity to be a coordinator," Burton said. "I am excited to come to a program like Nevada because I've known Chris Ault since I was 17 years old and I have tremendous respect for him and the program that he's built in Reno."

Considering how pass defense was one of the biggest weaknesses of the Wolf Pack this year, it's encouraging that Ault is bringing in a couple of coaches to do something about it. Interestingly, it also looks like Nigel Burton is something of a hot commodity - Bruin Roar, a UCLA blog, speaks quite highly of him:

Burton is currently the secondary coach up at Oregon State. Nigel has been on the staff with the Beavers for five years and their defense was one of the best in the conference this season. He is considered a fantastic recruiter and an up and coming coach. Before OSU, he coached at Portland State for a few seasons and at South Florida. He did an internship with the Denver Broncos for a season to help gain some experience at that level.

Unfortunately, Oregon State's athletic web site is down, so I'm unable to confirm or deny any of this. That said, it is encouraging that a section of Pac-10 fans find him to be an excellent coach, and that his personal connection with Ault brought him to our program. As I've said before, Ault's weakness has never been recruiting, as long as you ignore special teams - it's good to see that this also extends to assistant coaches. If Nigel is a decent game time coordinator and recruiter, we're going to be in decent shape.

EDIT: I read the comments on our last post, and, much to my surprise, these hires actually address the issues made by our visitors here. Ken Wilson is now the Assistant Head Coach, which, I suspect, is one of those idle positions created to keep Ault's friend around without actually putting him into a position where he can do any real damage. Meanwhile, Ault has pulled a proven, successful defensive coach at a Pac-10 school and brought him here, which... well, you have to admit, that's definitely a step in the right direction.

Athletic Budgeting

I had to "send Quasi deep into the vault" to get this one out, in this case to an article printed in the Nevada Sagebrush on 09/25/2007. To keep this in a bit of a perspective (albeit an inconclusive comparison), I will include the figures printed for BOTH Nevada universities. I figure this is an apt posting since it has come up in the past and will come up again, especially since my dear fellow blogger included another reference to coaches' salaries and how Ault fares into the mix.

According to the article, budgeting lies thusly:

School Up North:
Roughly $20,000,000

School Down South:
Roughly $24,800,000

Of that,

State Funding to Athletic Programs at the School Up North:
$6,763,868

State Funding to Athletic Programs at the School Down South:
$8,940,854

"From there, it is each school’s job to gain enough revenue to cover the remaining expenses for the year.

"In UNR’s case, additional revenue comes mainly from ticket sales and private donations (development), said John Nunn, associate athletic director at UNR. However, other sources include marketing/promotions, concession sales, royalties, NCAA and Western Athletic Conference."

So, according to these numbers (keeping in mind that the total budgets quoted here are approximate, then...

State Funding to Athletic Programs at the School Up North:
approx. 34%, or barely over 1/3.

State Funding to Athletic Programs at the School Down South:
approx. 36%, or barely over 1/3, but slightly higher that the School Up North.

Here's another quote for reference:

"UNLV’s coaching staff, as a whole, is also paid nearly double of what the coaching staff at Nevada receives. This is the big one. In 2005-2006, the Rebels coaching budget was $4,831,700 million, while the Wolf Pack’s was comparatively speaking, a measly $2,854,535 million."

There is a wealth of other info in this article, so I encourage all to read it; it does and will figure into our discussions here. I will point out, though, that when it comes to coaching salaries refer to the above info. regardless of your camp on the subject. But, if 2/3 of athletic funds at the beloved University of Nevada are raised from sources other than the state, we have to ask if this is the best that we can do. Well, is it? SMU folks were able to convince donors to contribute an extra $100K per year to lure June Jones (please see the link on my comrade's post below...granted, Dallas is just a sniffle bigger than Reno, but...). If not, is their enough concern amongst donors/alumni to raise the proverbial bar? What about the community at large? If not there, what can we do to raise their concerns and their willingness to contribute?

What we can learn from SMU

This just in, courtesy of ESPN: June Jones is going to SMU. Interestingly, June Jones' Wikipedia article provides a little insight:

Frustrated with what he viewed as a lack of support from the University, Jones opted to leave Hawaii at the end of the 2007 season. After initial reports had him interviewing at SMU, Hawaii officials had offers to raise his salary from $800,000 a year to $1.7 million a year and offered a commitment to improve its facilities; in addition there was an outpouring of support from Hawaii fans, including Gov. Linda Lingle. However, Jones contacted Hawaii on January 7, 2008 and let them know he had decided to accept an offer from SMU. Jones went 75-41 at Hawaii, including 4-2 in bowls. His teams finished first in the WAC twice and second two other times.[17]

What SMU proved is that, if you offer a coach enough money ($2 million in Dallas goes a lot farther than $1.7 million in Hawaii, especially when it's offered first), they'll go just about anywhere. SMU is not a winning program, and hasn't been for quite some time - in fact, its record since the Death Penalty was handed down to it leads to a 27% winning percentage. But, SMU proved they were "committed" (i.e. they were willing to pay Jones more money), so off he goes.

Where does that leave Nevada? The answer is obvious: Absolutely nowhere.

June Jones made $800,000 in Hawaii before SMU swept him off his feet. That salary made him the highest paid public employee in Hawaii, and was considered a very extreme sum at the time. Ault, meanwhile, makes less than that - less than half of that, to be more specific, and many people in Reno believe he is overpaid. Part of that can be explained by the results of his tenure, which haven't been terribly exciting as of late, but let's get real here - if we're going to get and keep a decent coach, we need to be willing to accept that we're going to have to pay real money. $2 million/year is a big-time salary - that makes June Jones the 15th highest paid coach in the country right now. Chris Ault, meanwhile, makes less than the coach at Florida Atlantic. Let that sink in for a bit - our coach makes less than the coach of a Sun Belt program.

You can't spend Kia money and expect to get a Mercedes. At this point, we're not even spending enough to get a used Camry. Sooner or later, Nevada needs to get serious - if we're going to be competitive, we have to be willing to pay a competitive wage. Chris Peterson from Boise State? $880k/year, and he could make triple that at any big-time school in the country. Pat Hill? $1.23 million/year. Hawaii was paying June Jones $800k/year until he bailed. Do we really wonder why we can't stay even with these guys?

(Numbers pulled from coacheshotseat.com.)

EDIT: I am in no way suggesting that we spend $2 million/year on a head coach. We have far more pressing needs at the moment, like updating our stadium and our facilities. That said, if we ever replace Ault, all of us need to face facts and realize that, if we're going to get AND KEEP a competitive coach, we will need to pay a competitive salary. Right now, we're paying a "competitive with SJSU and La Tech" salary, and we're getting SJSU and La Tech results. If we want to be competitive with the big boys of the WAC, we're going to need to pony up some money. $500k will probably need to be the starting point for a new coach here, with the promise that, if they do well, we'll pay them nearly double that in a few years. Otherwise, we're going to stay right where we're at - varying shades of mediocre gray.

Swear? Swear.

Since we're running a little lean on Ault coverage right now, I'm going to take a quick diversion into the realm of Roger Clemens and his interview on 60 Minutes. Since I don't watch 60 Minutes (or CBS - nope, not even for the NFL), I'm so happy that Fox Sports has a wrap-up of it:

NEW YORK (AP) - Roger Clemens said former trainer Brian McNamee injected him with the painkiller lidocaine and the vitamin B-12, according to the first excerpts released from the pitcher's interview with CBS's "60 Minutes."

McNamee said in the Mitchell report on doping in baseball that he personally injected Clemens with steroids in 1998 while with the Toronto Blue Jays, and with steroids and human growth hormone in 2000 and 2001 while with the New York Yankees.

[...]

Clemens told CBS that McNamee's accusation was "ridiculous" and said he "never" used banned substances.

"Swear?" CBS's Mike Wallace asked Clemens.

"Swear," Clemens responded.

The bigger question, of course, is did Clemens pinky swear, or was it a swear with his fingers crossed behind his back? I suppose the world may never know...