How rich is Craig Masback?

Dipshit wrote:

Well, I have a master's degree and ten years of work experience in IT (programming, project management, etc), and I don't make as much as the person at USATF sending out press releases. I also happen to live in Indianapolis, and frankly, these salaries are obscene for this area. The company I work for has far more employees (and far more events going on) than USATF and our PR person makes something around $50k...

These might seem like small salaries to someone from Cali, but in this area, you can buy a decent house for $125k and a friggin' mansion for $200k.

one thing to remember is that those numbers are including the dollar value of their benefits (health insurance, etc.). that probably adds tens of thousands to each person's salary.

i'm not going to defend masback's salary, largely because i know next to nothing about executive compensation. what i will say is that these people are experienced and have a background of being highly compensated (masback, for example, was an attorney for a washington dc law firm; others have worked for nike and the such). now, these people took pay cuts to come work for usatf. however, you are simply not going to lure good, experienced people to work for usatf by paying them a fraction of the salary they were earning before. these guys are doing this because they love it but i'm sure there are very few of us who would engage in what amounts to charity work by taking a massive pay cut to so something which we love; enjoyment of work only goes so far. what the general counsel makes is less than i made my first year out of law school. i'm sure she could command triple that salary right now. i don't care if this is indianapolis: if you want good people, you have to pay them a decent wage for their experience and skills. all of these people (perhaps excluding masback) could be making significantly more if they stayed where they were. i find that the market tends to set compensation pretty accurately.

re: "if you want good people, you have to pay them a decent wage for their experience and skills", can these people take a paycut, then, for doing a shit job?

This is analagous to some of the recent governmental appointments we've seen: that is, just because some has (or had) a job doesn't mean they're doing a good job. Simply being employed does not in of itself indicate whether that person is a star employee or someone just getting by.

I'd argue that for the job USATF does, these people are WAY overpaid.

Bayarean wrote:

An organization with just $19 million in revenues is not a major organization.

Masbacks compensation package is way out of wack with the size of the USATF.

Google some of the really big sports organizations, MLB, NFL, NASCAR, NHL which are hundreds of times the size of the USATF and see what their chief execs are making.

MBA--David Stern makes $8 million.

NFL--Paul Tagliabue made $6.4 million in 2003.

MLB's Bud Selig and NHL's Gary Bettman both make 7 figures, according to the Wall Street Journal, although I couldn't find exact figures in my quick google search.

So what's your point?

Seems to me that the USATF salary schedule is well-modeled after the pattern of American corporate capitalism! Oh, we did have 1 sub 2:10 guy last year. I would bet a lot that Japan with its greater number of fast guys (and women) doesn't pay its director anywhere near that much.

OXYRUNR wrote:

Seems to me that the USATF salary schedule is well-modeled after the pattern of American corporate capitalism! Oh, we did have 1 sub 2:10 guy last year. I would bet a lot that Japan with its greater number of fast guys (and women) doesn't pay its director anywhere near that much.

Perhaps you forgot about the fact that Masback governs all of T&F, not just the marathon/distance runners. How many sub-10.10, 20.20, 45.00, 13.40, or 49.00 guys did Japan have last year? How about 26 foot jumpers? 7'4" HJers?

damn, beat me to it, kev. people seem to forget the rest of the track events and all the field events when posting on this board. last i checked, the US was the best country in the world in this. sure, we have our problems, but i think many of these problems (lack of exposure, lack of interest, money, drugs, etc.) are problems which are shared by the sport as a whole and not just usatf.

OMB MAN-

what do you know about what usatf does? i think we have another instance here of people talking out of their ass about things they know jack shit about. i know these people could command higher salaries elsewhere and, from that standpoint, their salaries generally seem reasonable; i know very little about how good or bad of a job their doing. but they're still there and i would assume they would get fired if they couldn't handle what they're doing. i know for sure that jill pilgrim is damn good at her job. she is amongst the best sports law lawyers in the country and gets paid less than i did fresh out of law school. and, from what i've seen of her work, she's done an excellent job. please give me some specific examples of how these other people aren't doing a good job.

Google the annual revenues of the NBA, the NFL and the NHL. ARod makes more in a year than the whole USATF makes.

My point is that any organization that brings in just $19 million a year in revenues...this is revenue people, NOT profits....should not be paying anyone in excess of $400,000.

the USAF is a non-profit, perhaps its better to compare Masback's salary with other non-profit executives

Elizabeth Dole, American Red Cross, Revenue $1.7 billion salary $201,000

David Cooney, Goodwill, Revenue $950 million, salary $209,000

David Mercer, YMCA, revenue $2 billion salary, $249,000

Craig Masback, USATF, revenue $19 million, salary $400,000+

Seems a little out of whack to me.

Could someone with more business/legal experience than me explain why USATF operates as a non-profit? Would it be able to exist otherwise?

taxes.

why is "how rich" associated with income? (especially in our tax code - ugh!)

many people with wealth (my definition of rich) have low incomes and tax rates. and many people with high incomes have low wealth (building a business, upwardly mobile, etc.)

Bayarean wrote:

taxes.

Yeah, I do know that much. I suppose my question is this: How can USATF serve both professional interests and amateur, recreational interests as a non-profit?

This obviously leads to a bigger question (should it?). It works for soccer, where FIFA controls pretty much everything, but the individual national leagues have their own hierarchy to oversee the professional aspects of the sport, but something seems to be failing in the way that national and international (IAAF) athletics organizations preside over both professional and amateur/developmental interests.

Bayarean-

i see what you're getting at but i also think your category of "not-for-profit" encompasses organizations of many different varieties. usatf is not the red cross. they're completely different. and the activities/responsibilities of these ceo's are also different. secondly, as was pointed out at least tangentially before on this thread, some of those organizations (which get most of their money from donations/fundraising) have caps on the salary they can pay to officers. usatf is not subject to any such cap.

i'd like to know the compensation of comparable national association CEOs with similar responsibilities. i think that would be a much more useful comparison, as any expert on executive compensation would tell you, than telling us what the guy who heads the YMCA makes.

Bayarean wrote:

My point is that any organization that brings in just $19 million a year in revenues...this is revenue people, NOT profits....should not be paying anyone in excess of $400,000.

I'm not sure why it matters what the revenues of the organization are; USATF is very different from the organizations you mentioned in that it is not a charity and does not collect money for distribution as aid. The comparisons are totally inapt.

As USATF is a non-profit, we should judge Masback by how well he directs the organization to achieve its goals. If he does it well, he should be well-compensated.

And USATF should spend its resources as effectively as possible. I can't imagine it going below 250k for a CEO. Would it be able to get a CEO as good as Masback for that much? Only if the answer is yes should it save money and replace him.

People are paid their market value. USATF has no incentive to pay Masback $400,000+ a year if he is only worth $200,000. Masback gets the salary he does because that is what the market has determined is the value of the services he provides to the USATF organization. Just like Michael Jordan was paid $20,000,000 or so back in the late 90s. That's how much money he was worth to Chicago Bulls franchise. CEOs and directors are compensated highly because they are the ones making difficult decisions that eventually make or break their companies. If they fail, they get fired and lose their big compensation packages. The average guy makes $40,000 or $50,000 because they don't have such a large responsibility. They are not in a position to make decisions that could damage their company. Their ass is not on the line everyday. In case you haven't noticed, people get paid the most in the country (outside of professional athletes and entertainers) to be leaders, make difficult decisions that others don't want to make, and take responsibility for hundreds, if not thousands of others people.

You'd think that the executive compensation scandals of the last few years would have opened a few eyes...I guess not. CEOs don't get paid according to their market value...look up Larry Ellison's 2004 salary if you think that is true. CEOs get pais according to what they can get out of the Board of Directors, if the CEO has cosy relationships with enough Directors he she will get paid far more than their net worth.

Its a pretty nice club to be in....ever wondered how many Fortune 500 CEOs and senior executives serve on the Boards of other companies??? its in their own best interest to keep executive compensation packages spiralling upwards regardless of how their companies are performing. If CEOs were really "on the line" every day how many of them calculate their base salary on profits??? emmmmmmm NONE.

Craig Masback's primary function as CEO is to manage that $19 million revenue stream, increase it where he can, and maximize its impact.

Paying someone $400,000 a year to manage a $19 million concern is absurd no matter which way you slice it.

that's because calculating compensation solely on profits is silly. and if you need me to tell you why it's silly, you're not thinking hard enough.

you will be heartened, though, to know (if you don't know already) that one of those executive compensation scandals you allude to might very well change the whole ballgame of not only exec comp but also corporate governance as a whole. it sure doesn't get as much press as many of those other corporate scandals (enron, healthsouth, tyco, et al) because it isn't quite as juicy (in the layman's sense) as those. and the media rarely focuses on things that actually matter. keep your eyes out (or do a google search) for walt disney derivative suit (or eisner or ovitz). i believe the delaware court will be handing down their decision very soon. and it's going to be a blockbuster in corporate suites and boardrooms.

and, while it is rather absurd, the compensation of the executive is defined by the market. it's just a completely different market. would a company be better served hiring a no-name CEO at a low pay? maybe. but shareholders like the security of having a big-time guy or gal have that job. that's worth far more in market cap than the amount (potentially) lost in profits by paying a higher amount to the CEO. and that's just skimming the iceberg of the issue.

suffice to say, i think it's rather absurd for us to be second-guessing this issue so much when we know next to nothing. i strongly disagree that "managing $19 million" is masback's only (or even most important) responsibility. he does quite a bit more than that. is it worth $400K? well, in contrast to the "club" you mentioned above, the people deciding masback's salary don't have quite as many conflicts of interest as you claim corporate boards do. i think the salary is high, but i also think i'll defer to people who actually know a bit more about usatf than a 2003 tax return and some info they found on google.

OK defer away and leave the thread. The rest of us reserve the right to speculate away given that its our dues that pay his salary. As a card carrying member I'm a de facto share holder in the USATF and far reom it being absurd for me to comment on Masback's compensation package I believe its my, and every other member's responsibility to do so.

If the guys salary dwarfs his responsibilities it needs to be addressed, and if the members dont do it you can bet your ass the Board of Directors won't.

Chuck D, there are no other non-profits with revenues of 19 million where the CEO could command 400k in the marketplace.

In the private sector, 19 million in is typical of small manufacturing plants who employ 80 or so people. It would be rare to offer a salaery above 100k for such an operation, and rarer for total compensation to top 150k.

then all i would suggest you do is get a little more informed and make a little more compelling of a case. speculation gets you nowhere. your responsibiliy shouldn't be to just speculate away; actually find something out. otherwise this is all just academic and you're clicking away at your keyboard for no reason.

i suggested finding out the salaries of more comparable execs than elizabeth dole. you could also find out what the hell masback does other than "manage $19 million dollars." i'd also suggest finding out what he's made in previous years. this may merely be an abberation because he received a big bonus, deferred compensation, etc. just saying "$400K is too high" isn't an argument. i agree viscerally that it seems high, but i don't know anything about why the people who gave him the compensation did so. you don't either. if you or anyone else did find out something compelling, i guarantee you'd find lots of people on this site (including myself) joining you in some sort of campaign to get some change at usatf. hell, people send emails to newsreporters about silly garbage written in the podunk (ark.) press; i'm sure you could find at least as many people to put some pressure on for this. i'm sure people at usatf and many other interested parties (read: journalists) are aware of this thread. since you seem to be one of the more heated commentators, give us a reason to care.