For coaches, hours and pay don't add up

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For coaches, hours and pay don't add up If the hours are to be believed, one has to wonder when John Peacock finds the time to sleep.

From January through December, the Venice High football coach estimates he devotes more than 1,200 hours to his sport. That time is spent on everything from workouts, games, practices and recruiting, to tasks as mundane as laundry and equipment collection and storage.

What wasn't included were parent and coaches meetings, media interviews and fundraising, the latter one of Peacock's biggest consumers of time.

And for all that, Peacock last season earned the not-so-princely sum of $4,972. After taxes, $3,206, or approximately $2.67 an hour.

"Until you live it," he said, "you won't understand (the time involved)."

"What we're producing and the pay we're getting," Palmetto High football coach Dave Marino said, "it's third world."

Florida high schools develop and produce the most NFL talent. But across the state, its coaches lag in financial compensation compared to their contemporaries elsewhere. Lag badly.

According to the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, among the state's 64 districts that pay coaching supplements, the average high school coach earns $4,382. Collier County leads with $6,464, while Pinellas County is last at $2,758.

The disparity comes into focus for these coaches with the realization that counterparts in Alabama and Georgia earn supplements of more than $20,000. The highest-paid high school coach in Georgia, Buford's Jess Simpson, reportedly makes a supplement of $75,000, part of an overall salary of $174,000.

"I'm in it to affect young kids' lives and help them become better men and learn some life lessons," Peacock said. "That's why I do it. I'm not complaining. But I would like to see it evaluated and put a little more value in it."

According to the Sarasota County School Board, a supplement is a fixed percentage based on an established supplement salary schedule. These percentages vary according to position. A head coach in Sarasota County earns .12, while an athletic director gets .135 and a musical director .075.

But as Peacock pointed out, this supplement schedule is several thousand dollars less than a teacher's pay chart. And he said the schedule has been frozen for some time.

Three years ago, when Venice traveled to Texas to play Plano East, Peacock learned that Panther head coach Randy Jackson earned $120,000 a year and a new truck. "What he was really shocked about," Peacock said, "was me teaching."

"Coaching is a full-time job," he said. "But I also have a full teacher's load. I teach just as many classes as the teacher who packs up and leaves campus at 2:15 p.m."

Not all Florida counties pay supplements. In Bay, Okaloosa and Walton counties, a football coach is an administrative position, with pay similar to that of an assistant principal.

Bay County superintendent of schools Bill Husfelt said a head coach starts at $61,440 a year. The compensation rises into the mid-$80,000s with 30 years of experience.

They are hired on a year-to-year basis. If his team doesn't succeed, or if problems arise with players and parents, a coach can be fired after one season. They may teach weightlifting and handle lunch and bus duty.

"The problem was," Husfelt said, "we kept getting football coaches to come, then they'd quit coaching football and they were teachers with annual contracts and we'd have schools full of ex-coaches who didn't want to coach and there was no room to hire new ones.

"Now, they're kept as long as the principals want to keep them. No contracts beyond one year. (The money) is not breaking any records. It's much lower than what they get in Georgia. But it's good money for our area." Former Indian assistant Jeremy Brown earns more than $60,000 as football coach at Mosley High.

Peacock knows were he to step down at Venice, candidates would line up to replace him. Such is the attraction of living in Florida. Which is why a move to some place like Alabama is out of the question.

"I could go to Alabama and make $110,000," he said, "but I'm in Alabama. I could be here swimming with my kid and go out on my boat.

"I just wish we could get something to make a little more sense."

As Dave Marino might say, a little less third world.

Doug Fernandes

Doug Fernandes is an award-winning journalist at the Herald Tribune. He has observed the sports scene in Sarasota since 1987.
Last modified: July 27, 2016
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