CU votes to approve Deion Sanders’ contract, however questions stay about funds

The College of Colorado Board of Regents voted Thursday to formally start the period of Prime Time — or Coach Prime — at Folsom Discipline. 

Though Deion Sanders, the previous NFL star, was unveiled because the Buffs’ new head coach earlier this month, CU Regents nonetheless needed to vote to approve the contract. The bipartisan, elected board — which makes institutional selections for the system that oversees all 4 CU campuses — voted Thursday 8-1 to formally approve Sanders’ five-year contract. Sanders will make $500,000 per 12 months as his base pay, with $4,000,000 in supplemental pay per 12 months in addition to alternatives for incentive-based pay and merit-based raises. 

District 1’s outgoing regent, Jack Kroll, was the lone dissenting vote. He cited an unsustainable monetary mannequin as a key motive he voted in opposition to the contract. 

“Whereas I commend the selection of our third Black head coach in a row and fourth general, the system nonetheless thrives on the again of unpaid labor, and I imagine it’s solely a matter of time earlier than athletes achieve recognition as staff, which can additional problem the sustainability of the monetary mannequin,” Kroll stated through the vote, his closing act as a standing regent. 

Regent Glen Gallegos, whereas voting to approve the contract, expressed fatigue at CU’s sample of hiring and firing soccer coaches on the drop of a button. 

“That is my fifth soccer coach, [and] an athletic director left with out pay. Someplace alongside the road, we now have to cease this sample we’re in,” Gallegos informed different regents. “Someplace alongside the road, we now have to cease this. We have now to begin making individuals accountable for the alternatives that we’ve made.”

Kroll later informed CPR Information it wasn’t a vote in opposition to an individual, however as a substitute one in opposition to an inequitable system.

“In a time like this, when college students are struggling to afford a school training, we now have a number of turnover with our staff as a result of we’re not capable of maintain aggressive salaries, a few of the challenges we now have with capital development down on the Denver campus,” Kroll stated. “I simply assume there’s higher methods to make use of the taxpayers’ cash than to assist a monetary mannequin in large time school athletics that rewards individuals on the prime and leaves everybody else — college students, workers, school, taxpayers — holding the bag,” Kroll stated. 

The college’s athletics division operated at a lack of $17 million in 2021. When Sanders was introduced as coach earlier this month, Athletics Director Rick George stated he didn’t know the place the additional cash to rent Sanders would come from. However, George stated he was assured directors would discover a approach to make it work. 

Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at CU who based the now-defunct Sports activities Governance Heart, stated the college’s athletics division has promised to wean itself off monetary assist from the educational facet of the college. It’s a promise Pielke thinks can be troublesome to maintain. 

“It is clear that CU athletics doesn’t become profitable. So, CU athletics doesn’t have a sovereign wealth fund that it deposits the cash in,” Pielke Jr. stated. “It does not switch cash to the principle campus.”

The Buffs have paid pricey buyouts to the 2 coaches they’ve fired since 2018. A 3rd, Mel Tucker, left to take one other head teaching job at Michigan State. If Sanders is fired with out trigger, he’ll be entitled to as much as 75 p.c of his remaining base wage. If Sanders leaves the college inside a 12 months for one more teaching job, he’ll owe CU $15 million.