By Patricia Alex, Staff Writer, The Record
The five-year deal that Rutgers University approved Monday with its new head football coach, Chris Ash, is valued at more than $11 million and is laden with incentives that could boost his annual compensation by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The agreement, which the university’s board of governors approved unanimously, calls for Ash to be paid $2 million in his first year on the job, with raises of $100,000 in each successive year. It also includes a host of annual incentives including bonuses that range from $50,000 for the good academic standing of his players to $500,000 if the Scarlet Knights win a playoff championship.
The annual bonuses outlined in the agreement could total nearly $1 million.
Ash’s base salary is more than double the $950,000 that Rutgers paid his predecessor, Kyle Flood, whom the university fired last week. But even with the bonuses and incentives, Ash’s compensation is not likely to hit the $3.2 million annual average for head football coaches in the Big Ten.
Even so, the package shows Rutgers’ willingness to pump more money into an already heavily subsidized athletic program with the hope that doing so will help the state’s flagship public university compete successfully in the Big Ten athletic conference, which it joined last year.
[…]Some faculty members and students have been critical of Rutgers’ recent track record of deficit spending on athletics. The university charges its students $14,000 annually in tuition and fees — among the highest of any flagship public school in the nation.
“Academics, student services – those are the things we feel should be the priority rather than competing in the Big Ten,” said Nat Bender, a representative of the faculty union.
Rutgers provided $36.3 million in subsidies to its athletic programs in 2014, covering 47 percent of the $77 million budget with institutional aid, including $10.3 million in mandatory student fees.
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