Graybeard, Tulsa (12/31/2008 7:00:27 AM)

Coach Bob is worth every dime.

Tulsa World General Editor Rusty Lang , tulsa (12/31/2008 7:07:26 AM)

Here is a story from the TW:
NCAA: Fewer than half of OU football players graduating
By MICHAEL MAROT AP Sports Writer
Published: 10/15/2008 8:44 AM
Documents: View the graduation success rate reports for OU, OSU, Tulsa, ORU and Arkansas.
Oklahoma is one of only four BCS schools to graduate fewer than 50 percent of football players, according to an NCAA report.

The graduation success rate was 46 percent for OU football

Hijinx, (12/31/2008 7:38:27 AM)

He’s a coach not a history teacher.

Ol City Boy, (12/31/2008 8:07:23 AM)

Kudos to Mr. Hoover for a factual article in the spirit of full disclosure.

I'm not an OU alum, but if the facts in the article raised anyone's blood pressure, I've always felt if you want the compensation of someone else - go get the education, training, skills and experience they have. Further, it seems only fair to look at other taxpayer funded jobs to see what performance standards are in place for their compensation, assuming there are any.

This is one of the great things about this country, you can be all you want to be and you'll get the pay for that position as well. If we don't like our present pay, we can take measures to improve the amount.

In many ways, we're ALL products and we sell our services to buyers in a marketplace.

Nuff said.

Angry Citizen!, Bluejacket (12/31/2008 8:15:09 AM)

I swear I read something the other day that college tuition at public universities was rising-

Bob 1, BA (12/31/2008 8:22:23 AM)

There should be a cap on coaches salaries, they are overpaid and under worked now. That money could go to a lot of other worth while causes................

Original Floyd R Turbo, Rural (12/31/2008 8:42:51 AM)

Angry, I don't understand the thinking of the majority of our fellow citizens who seem to have their self-esteem wrapped up in the success of OUs season. But they foot the bill for football, so power to them. And to Coach Bob, simply because I admire anyone who does his job better than anyone else. Too bad we can get that kind of excellence out of our elected officials at the state level.

Lucas, (12/31/2008 8:50:53 AM)

Where in the world are our priorities? Coach Stoops directs a GAME that entertains people. He is WAY over-compensated as are all professional athletes and those associated with them. Real jobs like teacher,fireman,construction worker,etc don't even come close. A $150,00 guaranteed yearly raise? Most people don't even make that as a base salary. This is a version of the "golden parachute" contract clauses used by CEOs to get money whether they perform or not.

paleface, Ponca City (12/31/2008 8:52:56 AM)

How does he drive two cars?????
Heard his wife gets a PINK car though her job also.
Good hard working people....
Please do not get me wrong here but with all the money he gets paid you are telling me he can not afford to buy him self and his wife a car...Whats worong here????

Sharkey Hammerhead, owasso (12/31/2008 9:24:43 AM)

Here is a couple of things to think about, maybe he needs that much money to take care of his children,and to pay for their mental state of mind .. How would you like to be one of his children and here all the stuff that we print about their Father .. He`s payed well because he`s at the best football school in America as well as bring attention to the State of Okla.. That means buisness is good here in the Indian reservation.. Its no difference than most Pastors make in my churh we give our preacher his house to live in pay all of his utilitys and some other perks as well ..But back to Bob, we could go back to the days of Schnelilberger,Blake and Gibbs. Bob doesn`t have a high rate of grads because most of his players are in the NFL by the time they are Juniors.. He`s educated, charming , and a good football coach.. More power to him ,he signed the contract that was given him ,wouldn`t you ?

wk, (12/31/2008 9:28:35 AM)

At least he doesn't have to worry about getting that extra $250k for winning his BCS championship. Tebow will ruin that party.
Someone tell me again why it is college athletes can't get a weekly stipend to pay for incidental expenses etc while they are bringing all of this revenue to the universities and their coaches?

Dewd, Cache (12/31/2008 10:10:07 AM)

Bob Stoops is not worth six million dollars. He's worth double that and more.

I do hope Bob stays, but with crybaby Mack Brown being paid more than Stoops, we're vulnerable to the ever-lurking coach robbers. We could lose him.

VoteNo, Tulsa (12/31/2008 10:53:44 AM)

College athletes don't need a weekly stipend for incidentals. Scholarship athletes have everything necessary paid for - food, housing, tuition, books. Seriously, cry me a river that they don't have a laundry and beer stipend. And they can spend their own $50 for some notebooks and pencils.

I shoulda been a coach instead of an enginerd. I don't know what I was thinking! That's a lotta money. I won't say it's too much. He's getting paid what the market will bear. Just like I'm getting paid what the market will bear for enginerds. The fact that the difference is about a factor of 100 is my bad!

What the ?, Tulsa (12/31/2008 11:05:33 AM)

Stoops is paid to COACH and only coach. OU's coach deserves a contract as well as the others in the league.

hawkdaddy57, (12/31/2008 11:06:42 AM)

I agree with wk. While I don't have a problem with how much Stoops makes, I think it is criminal that he continually gets pay raises and the players making him look good get nothing. As a former student-athlete, I had to scrape by on pennies when my athletic stipend ran out mid-way through the month. OU ought to be able to distribute the obviously over-flowing income they have in the athletic budget to the athletes doing the work.

hawkdaddy57, (12/31/2008 11:18:48 AM)

VoteNo, you approve dumping additional money on a coach who is already well-paid and nothing for athletes? C'mon! Truth is, Athletes on FULL scholarships(like football players) have most essential needs met but nothing else. If it weren't for the team sweats issued by the athletic dept, some athletes wouldn't have warm clothes to wear in the winter. That is where most of these kids come from. Since the f-ball players are not allowed to work during the school year, there is little, if no money for anything except housing and food. Athletes deserve to be able to enjoy things other than just the bare necessities. The amount of time and pain they put out so their beloved institutions can bring in millions is worth a little extra compensation.

HOGRIDER, (12/31/2008 11:26:32 AM)

Coaches will be paid whatever the market dictates, just like any other occupation. This is America.

tulsaOUfan, Tulsa (12/31/2008 11:28:06 AM)

"The University of Oklahoma football coach is scheduled to receive a $3 million anniversary benefit on New Year's Day, pushing his 2008 compensation over the $6 million mark."

If he gets the money on January 1, 2009 how can it be counted as 2008?

tulsaOUfan, Tulsa (12/31/2008 11:35:39 AM)

"The graduation success rate was 46 percent for OU football"

Ok, TW, instead of dumping on OU, how about running a story about how the NCAA calculates graduation rates and asking the question how accurate the calculation is. In many cases the NCAA doesn't count people who actually graduated. Let's hear all the facts first. But then again, the TW has never worked that way.

Travis, Tahlequah (12/31/2008 11:46:55 AM)

OU athletics operate in the black and football generates 44.5% of the total. Stoops earned his money.

Latisha, Tulsa (12/31/2008 11:50:23 AM)

OU never got credit for the graduations of Josh Heupel, Quinten Griffin, or Torrence Marshal. OU will also be penalized for Rhett Bomar whether he graduates at his new school or not because he started at OU.

Latisha, Tulsa (12/31/2008 12:25:05 PM)

Nobody enjoys college sports more than I do, but it is unbelievable how out of touch our society's priorities are...what did Bob do? Discover a cure for lymphoma?
......................
any hear about free market based pay? how out of touch our society is when we prefer socialism over free market capitalism

VoteNo, Tulsa (12/31/2008 12:25:20 PM)

hawkdaddy - I didn't say I approved. I said the coach was getting what the market would bear.

You're right, student athletes do have the right to have more the just the bare necessities. I just don’t think the school should pay for it. If I go on a business trip and my business concludes early and I want to see movie. I pay for it. My company pays for my basic needs while travelling for business: a place to sleep, a car to get to the place I need to work, food. Anything else is on me.

For a college athlete, they are getting a college education, food and housing in return for playing their sport. I say anything else is on them and it’s a good trade. Maybe it sucks for four or five years not to have things their classmates have or do all the things their classmates do, but the big picture is this: suck it up for the four years and at the end of it you either have a degree that allows you to get a job so you won’t have to do without or you’re a superstar and you go pro.

I wasn’t a college athlete. I paid my own way, worked my butt off and starved part of the time. But I graduated (eventually), got a job and now I don’t have to starve. Probably you don't either.

For the record - the article said the program brought in millons but netted about $650,000 - not millions.

hawkdaddy57, (12/31/2008 1:20:40 PM)

VoteNo,

First of all, your analogy comparing yourself to a college student is ridiculous. You pay for your own extracurricular activities with the money your job pays you. If you are saying that these kids' jobs are to play football, then what you're saying supports my argument. Just like your job allows you to have the money to do other things, so should a college athlete's. Your job provides the essentials as well as the extra stuff.

I agree that a free education is invaluable but that won't payoff until many years later. Ask the kid who can't afford to go home to see his parents or can't buy a new jacket if he could use a little extra help now. The best thing about a college scholarship is being without debt when you're done, unlike so many other regular students. The problem is that we always try to compare normal students with athletes and it doesn't work. Like yourself, most people struggled through college financially. I know both of my siblings did. I attended a private school for my education and could never have done that without an athletic scholarship. It would have saved me 4 surgeries and multiple medical issues though.

But its apples and oranges to compare regular students to athletes. My father-n-law gets fired up any time an OU player gets in trouble and isn't kicked out of school because his son, who is currently a student, would never be treated the same. At a school like OU, the athletes were recruited by many other schools and could have gone about anywhere. They chose Oklahoma, thus making the team better, making the coaches look better and making the universities a lot of money. Those same players should reap some of the benefits. It's hard for people who didn't play college sports to understand. I would be the same way. Truth of the matter is that these athletes sacrifice a lot more than most people are willing to give up.

Your right about the money. That's why I said that the athletic dept "brings in" millions and not "makes" millions. Those numbers never measure how much the football program really generates for the rest of the school though. Besides, $650,000 would go a long way to helping the athletes out.

Carlos, Tulsa (12/31/2008 1:35:06 PM)

But is he a MAN? Is he 40? I think not.