YOUR USATF just paid Logan $1.095M for doing NOTHING

Sounds like a gov't job.

If they let Logan do the job he was hired to do elites would be getting more money now.

That's dues from 36,500 members.... do they even have that many members? Oh, wait, Nike pays the bills for USATF these days. Just make sure all the Nike athletes are highlighted and promoted at USATF events.

This is not a golden parachute; this is compensation after an unjust dismissal by the USATF board.

Want to stop huge claims like this? Then push for the hiring of real professionals at the top of the USATF org chart. As long as it continues to be run like a Mickey Mouse organization, you're going to see penalties like this.

As I understand it, it was the remainder of the monies owing under his effectively guaranteed contract, which was deemed to have been wrongfully terminated.

It was the BOARD who negotiated that contract. It's easy enough to include provisions that can avert this kind of disaster.

I understand fully the legal complexities, hence the title of my post--he has been paid a million dollars for doing nothing.

I'm not suggesting one way or another what the solution "should" have been, given that the contract was in place--maybe the USATF should have let him do what he wanted, in that case he would still be there and actually doing something to merit the money.

But as it stands, the fact is that he is getting it, and giving nothing in exchange for it.

That is a bad bargain negotiated by the Board on behalf of YOU, the USATF membership.

The hindsight solution, of course, was to have negotiated a different contract. Yes, it IS easy for me to say, because I myself have negotiated such contracts, even back when Logan's services were first retained.

Ridiculous. Look at his base salary relative to the overall budget. Ridiculous, even more ridiculous than the other inflated salaries of those who have sold their decision-making power to the main sponsor. Look at his salary as a percentage of the total salaries paid by USATF--ridiculous.

He has raped USATF, and revealed the board as either a bunch of chumps, or a bunch of sellouts.

Either way, they're not getting my $35

Vote with your feet, where you can.

So this article

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=trackandfield&id=7212503

talks about the $1.095 million. My question is for an accountant. Did USATF book all of what they owed Logan as being on the 2010 books retroactively (the settlement was agreed to in 2011) or do you think USATF still might be on the hook for more money for Logan in 2011.

Yeah, much like My Home Depot paid Bob Nardelli $210,000,000 for nothing. Welcome to modern American business.

Maybe not NOTHING.

USATF's charter is to select teams for the Olympics and Paralympics, and by extension to win medals. All the rest of the LDR, Masters, and associated crap is not what they're really in business for. USATF is really judged by medal performances at the Olympics.

We just had one of our best World Championship performances for Team USA. I've never been a fan of Logan, but I do think that some of the changes put in by Logan (Project 30 and some of the other things that have been ridiculed by some here) have been instrumental in improving things.

So on that basis, it could be said that USATF got their money's worth.

The way I see it the membership just paid Logan $1.09M sum to allow Hightower/Wickens/Chaplain/etc to retain their perks until death. We've seen how they pass out the perks to Pinkowski, Wittenberg, etc. then get reciprocal perks at NYM, BM, CHIM, etc. Logan wanted to shitcan them and lost out to that krew and to Nike. The only way to reform the system in to put in lifetime term limits of 6-8 years I'd reccommend. That's means after your lifetime term is up you may never participate in any capacity as a USATF manager, director, board member, wheter paid, pro-bono, consultant, etc.

I'm not a USATF member. It's not MY USATF.

Why do you sheeple keep sending USATF dues money? Cancel your USATF membership and starve the organization of any "sport consumer" funding.

Azaleas wrote:

Yeah, much like My Home Depot paid Bob Nardelli $210,000,000 for nothing. Welcome to modern American business.

It wasn't "for nothing". The Home Depot recorded record profits under Nardelli. He built it into an 80 billion dollar company. His problem was that he made unpopular changes at a time when the stock plateaued. Since his departure there has been very little change in the HD stock.

noUSATF wrote:

Why do you sheeple keep sending USATF dues money? Cancel your USATF membership and starve the organization of any "sport consumer" funding.

Only a relatively small portion of their revenue comes from membership fees. They don't feel it if you don't renew. Everyone on letsrun.com could not renew and it would mean nothing. Youth and their parents/coaches make up the bulk of the membership and they'll never boycott.

d--

If you believe that whatever Logan did while actively involved with USATF was worth the entire value of his contract, notwithstanding the fact that he was able to complete whatever he did before the natural expiration of his contract, that might be a legitimate way to construe the contract...

However, that is NOT how the contract was written. It wasn't a fixed-price contract. If the contract had included different termination and compensation provisions (very easily done), the USATF could have gotten the same production from Logan for a million dollars less than they paid.

It's not a question of whether what he did was good or not, or whether it was worth the entire value of his contract or not--it's a question of waste. The USATF paid a million dollars more than they needed to for those results.

I know that the terms of his contract conform to those of other similar executive contracts, but things are changing in the corporate world, if only slowly. To vest such a percentage of resources in one guy, and to effectively guarantee those payments unnecessarily, is a waste. It's an example of the sort of glad-handing and self-dealing of which boards are sometimes notorious, except that in this case, unlike Home Depot, there is a general public interest at stake.

USATF may have gotten its money's worth, but they could have gotten it for $1M less.

That said, I am in basic agreement with the substance of your post, including the essential function and mission of the USATF.