CHAPEL HILL — Four days after basketball coach Roy Williams was asked if he would be willing to take a pay cut to help the university, North Carolina football coach Butch Davis faced a similar question from the same local TV station during his news conference today.
Davis' answer, in a nutshell: His football program is trying to find a way to make cuts; he gives back to the community, the university and his church; that's a better question for the university's leadership to face.
Davis, like Williams, averages more than $2 million a year in salary, but neither coach is paid entirely from state funds.
Here's the extended text of his comments:
Q: Do you have any concerns with the budget crises at the university at this time, and would you be willing to participate in an involuntarily furlough or take a pay cut?
Davis: "That's a very, very interesting topic all across the country. There's no question everybody recognizes that we are in very challenging and difficult economic times.
"I can tell you there's not a day that goes by in this athletics department, and especially in this football program — we are always looking for ways that we can be smarter and more prudent about our budget: last year, busing to Virginia as opposed to flying to Virginia.
"This year, we just had a significant meeting about ways — whether it's hotels, meal plans, the number of players that travel ... the way we do training camp, are their smart ways that we can be prudent about that money that we have? I will tell you that I feel unbelievably blessed and fortunate to be a coach and be in this situation.
"And I will tell you that every single place that I have coached, my wife and I have given back not only to the community and not only to our church, we have given back to the institution itself. Long before it was economically in a crisis, we were doing that, and we look forward in the future to always being in a position to be able to do that, to give back to this university, to the community and to our church.
Q: Would you take a paycut, though, or participate in a furlough?
Davis: "That's not a question — that's a political hot button, and not really a question that any coach should be put in a position to have to answer. ... The leadership of the university, that's probably more in line with a decision they would need to make."
-- Robbi Pickeral
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13 comments:
No way in the world will Butch Davis give up one single penny. Instead, he'll probably ask for another raise.
Very nice comment "anonymous"... Would you take a pay cut?? Sure you would...
I know it's a blog, but since it's part of the CLT OBS, shouldn't someone be checking spelling and grammar?
Make sure Coaches O'Brien and Lowe over at iNCeST are asked the same question.
Who is the idiot that keeps asking the question? Maybe they need an involuntary furlough or permanent pay cut.
Butch Davis has probably made more money for the university, i.e. more fans in Kenan, more national attention, better recruits, than any coach we have had.
The money for Davis is money well spent and we will see the results improve each year he is here.
When one's skills prohibit from asking insightful questions about a sport or program, why not jump in with an inflammatory political query to see if maybe you can get a juicy nugget out of it?
Since coaches know better than to go there, perhaps the readers should; any "journalist" with the ovaries to ask such a question should preface it with his or her own statement of sacrifices and concessions to help out in the economic crisis.
Shoddy journalism, Robbi. When you get the time, how about walking us through the Tampa 2 coverage scheme?
Robbi,
How timely is the subject matter of this piece! Are you guys going to ask every coach in America the same question? In America, thank goodness the market still sets people's compensation.
Since you are a newspaper journalist, you clearly don't care about money, so why ask?
It's a completely fair question to a state employee who basically blackmailed and strong-armed the institution to give him a raise after only one unproductive, poorly-performed year. If you or I had job performance like that, we'd get a pay cut, or even fired whether we liked it or not.
UNC fans need to quit deluding themselves. Butch will latch on to the next better opportunity that comes along. Remember, you're a basketball school.
What a pitiful offering MadMax...if this is the best you can bring to the table then remain in your trailer and bother noone...your shortsighted and intellectually deprived comments only attempted to reduce the quality level of our otherwise rational discussion...please continue your baseless babbling somewhere amidst the nearest busy intersection...
So, I guess the answer from Butch is "no" seeing as how he couldn't even bring himself to actually say the word. Not surprising at all.
Midge, What does NC State have to do with it?
Since apparently posting anonymously makes some of you all-knowing bastards feel more important, here's my shot across the bow to all of you anti-UNC clowns:
I'd bet money that if every single one of you were asked to take a pay cut, you'd whine about it. I bet that no one will EVER ask Coach K that question in public, regardless of his private school affiliation because if they did, he'd try and have him neutered behind the scenes. No reason to ask Cutcliff because he's private school as well, but what about Lowe and Toby? Who cares if Toby's one of the lowest paid coaches in the ACC, he still makes more than the 1st anonymous and Max's salaries combined over the course of 10 years.
So Max, if we're a basketball school, does that make you a bass fishing school? Because you pretty much suck at everything else. And I already know what your response is gonna be, so save yourself the trouble of 41-10, and just remember that we STILL own you even after your last two wins.
And to the person asking Midge why bring State into this conversation: they brought up the "state paid" salary, time to throw it back in the face.
Dear Almighty Whoami,
It's not anti-UNC, it's a fair question. Who cares if they ask Tom O'Brien or anyone else for that matter. They asked Butch. And what about this is "throwing it back in their faces?" Another sorry excuse of a UNC fan I suppose.
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