New Law under Obama = Death for Most College Track Programs

DiscoGary wrote:

Bye Bye Track wrote:

For those thinking this won't apply to coaches . . .

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2016/05/17/department-of-labor-fair-labor-standards-act/84430000/

One news source says it doesn't cover coaches and another says it does. We need to read the law itself. Anyone got a link?

"Coaches may qualify for the exemption if their primary duty is teaching as opposed to recruiting students to play sports or performing manual labor. "

According the Law of Higher Ed, coaches are exempt, but that is not the issue. The issue is overall funding. There are a bunch of hourly employees in the athletic department and on the campus. They will cut jobs in order to keep the jobs for the sports the department values. For instance, a bigger sport like football may have a few recruiting coaches, who made the minimum salary. Now they have to pay them the full salary plus benefits since they don't fall under the exemption. This money is going to need to come from somewhere . . . so they start cutting assistant coaches and coaches from other sports to keep the main sport.

The final decision rest with the Human Resources Department and how they classify the position. As the federal gov't will surely audit their classification it could be interesting as to what positions will fall under what category.

bump

more thoughts from the LR. I think this law is going to be devastating for colleges and universities unless some major tuition overhauls are made.

DiscoGary wrote:

Bye Bye Track wrote:

For those thinking this won't apply to coaches . . .

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2016/05/17/department-of-labor-fair-labor-standards-act/84430000/

One news source says it doesn't cover coaches and another says it does. We need to read the law itself. Anyone got a link?

Here is the Rule:

Here is a quote from the newly issued Rule (go to page 27)

In addition, coaches may qualify for the exemption if their primary duty is teaching as opposed to recruiting students to play sports or performing manual labor.

They are talking about teaching because teachers are exempt from overtime rules without using the "salary test" which is what was adjusted.

Here is the Act as applicable to teachers (see (a)(1):

Here are the regulations as applicable to teachers:

Assistant coaches can qualify generally if a certain amount of their duties are considered teaching. Here is how the Department of Labor has opined with respect to whether an assistant coach can be considered a teacher -

Head Coaches, if not able to be exempt under the teacher exemption, can be exempt under the Executive exemption (

) which has the $47,000 salary requirement

I don't think there are too many full time head coaches that make $35k anymore. My guess is $40k is pretty standard, so $47k isn't that significant anyway.

Two words: comp time.

These individuals will be paid overtime in the form of comp time. You want the offseason off? Earn it. This works for ticket office and all the other bullcrap positions that are going to "cost so much"

They don't have to raise the pay of all these people. They just have to pay them overtime when needed. A lot of positions are only busy part of the school year. The rest of the year is a joke. Don't forget this part. Everyone does not get 47k.

This is a good thread. When I was still coaching at Cornell, I got an email from a PA college coach and he was wondering whether he should quit or work for some sub-standard wage?

I meant to publish his email. If you are this person, please email me -

robertjohnson@letsrun.com

Is Obama a dictator? Presidents can't write laws.

I finally agree with Obama .

99% of college is bull .

Stick your liberal arts, business, and history degrees up your arse .

You're all just to lazy to work .

World doesn't need another god damned 4:30 miler; but we need ditch

diggers .

Maybe I am not understanding, but when I read the USA Today article linked on USTFCCCA yesterday it talked about hourly versus salary.

My understanding was employers were either going to have to raise salaries to the new $913 per week amount, or move employees to hourly pay and make them overtime eligible.

Hourly pay is not realistic in coaching; during the season when coaches go overtime it would get very expensive, even at a rate of $15 an hour. Say a coach works 60 hours a week for 40 weeks a year and does not work at all for 12 weeks (I think this is somewhat normal with travel). Even at $15 an hour a coach would make around $42000 a year with the overtime.

If universities’ won't make them overtime eligible at an hourly rate then they have to pay coaches a salary of at least $913 a week.

Am I understanding this right? Are there other loop holes that I am not seeing?

I read through the exemptions. Teachers are exempted, but I did not see the word coach used anywhere (I do understand that it may be possible to classify them as teachers).

I foresee track coaching pay improving, but the number of positions to decrease.

Has anyone else heard of any college assistant coach positions being eliminated? Two friends (in my very small circle) have been recently let go by eliminating their position from the track staff. The two guys who had their position eliminated were very very good coaches. One just had a 2:03 HS kid run 1:52 for example and the other had several conference champions in his event group.

I can't help but think there is a relationship with the FLSA coming into effect.

I've been rolling this legislation for over a year now and here is the meat-This law is about "white collar" workers (those paid a salary and typically work more than 40hrs a week for their place of employment.) A "blue collar" worker, on the other hand, is paid an hourly wage and the business will regulate their schedules and hours as needed to accomplish the tasks of said business. If a blue collar worker works over 40 hours, they are entitled to time and a half.....whereas a salaried employee is exempt (not eligible) for overtime pay.This new law states that in order for a company to put an employee on Salary and not allow them to work overtime hours, they must pay them $47,500 a year......OR make them a blue collar working and give them hours. This absolutely applies to coaches, as the majority of our job description entales mentoring, teaching mechanics, teaching the sport, aiding in the learning process, etc. it falls under the "professional" classification. "Teaching" is not referring to etching a class on campus, it refers to teaching a skill set or mentoring/educating the athletes in their chosen path while on the campus. Next, there may be some schools who opt to axe positions, but most will just balance out the job responsibilities and require less hours of them. The result will be less provided to the student-athlete experience and some coaches being forced to not recruit as much, not travel, report their hours worked etc....It will force athletic department staffs, with smaller budgets, to be more efficient or make cuts. I work for a mid major as a head coach, I make less than 47k a year and my bosses over in administration have zero idea that this law was even in the planning stages. They could have been spending time designing ways to be in compliance, but instead have rendered themselves unaware and ill prepared to deal with the HR puzzle that is about to hit them. Because of the poor preparation, some people may end up losing their jobs that otherwise could do the same thing for about the same money just reclassified as hourly instead of exempt from overtime. Remember- a business doesn't have to fire an employee or pay the, 47,500 a year. If I make 36,000 salary, instead of bumping me up to 47k, they could continue to employ me but pay me hourly instead and monitor my hours and restrict my overtime. If an employer feels that the employee has too many responsibilities, that could not be delegated, they may just opt instead to pay that one employee the 47k and focus on others. This thread should be titled: End of Assistant Coaches Annual Contracts.

ya hurd with purd wrote:

Has anyone else heard of any college assistant coach positions being eliminated? Two friends (in my very small circle) have been recently let go by eliminating their position from the track staff. The two guys who had their position eliminated were very very good coaches. One just had a 2:03 HS kid run 1:52 for example and the other had several conference champions in his event group.

I can't help but think there is a relationship with the FLSA coming into effect.

Stupid

not so fast, cowboy wrote:

Is Obama a dictator? Presidents can't write laws.

Oh, stop. Haven't you caught on to the LRC vibe yet? If something bad (more accurately: something an individual doesn't like) happens during the time of the Obama presidency, it's Obama's fault; if something good happens, then BHO had nothing to do with it.

For instance, rates of violent crime in the US are half of what they were 25 years ago (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm), and the decline has been pretty steady: slight (yet only slight, and short-lived) upticks in the administrations of Bush I and Bush II, but otherwise a consistent downward trend.

Does Obama deserve credit for the decrease? Not much, I'd say. But would he get the "credit" if he'd been President during an upsurge like that in the Nixon-Ford-Carter years? You betcha!

To borrow a Sam Harris line (used in another context): This is how you play tennis without the net.

phil rizuto wrote:

L L wrote:

This isn't going to end track.

Track is already being ended athletic departments looking for profit and cutting track because it doesn't generate revenue.

bullshit. If a college track team has 10 scholarships and has 100 people on the team, and the college costs 40,000 a year, those 10 scholarships don't cancel out the money coming in from the other 90 student athletes if you divided it into scholarship vs non scholarship. That program even with the overhead costs is still making money for the school by students paying to attend. I realize ADs dont count that as revenue , but thats because theyre not only stupid, but theyre underhanded and slimey. Its a game they play. Let the enrollment go down to 30 total on the team though, and that coach would get fired. Because it's real money. It's revenue as far as I'm concerned.

In what world would a college under revenue pressure or Title 9 pressure or whatever have 100 students on the team? That's preposterous, try 25 athletes of each gender at a large state school program. Most are cutting the men's team to smaller rosters than that. While this won't end track outright, it's just another in a myriad of pressures which are certainly contributing to the decline of track and small market sports in general at colleges.

In the world of 90 percent of Division one teams, and all of D2 and 3. Most schoools are tuition driven. I'm not saying your wrong about the power 5's,

L L wrote:

This isn't going to end track.

Track is already being ended athletic departments looking for profit and cutting track because it doesn't generate revenue.

Exactly.

This is like the sh!tty grocery saying it's being killed when it has to pay a povertp-- evel minimum wage.

.If you cant pay staff, you don't have a business model.

Track has failed to innovated

These programs should die. Darwinism.

Obama didn't make your conference meet boring.

So has anyone met with ther university HR department? The link above me makes it seem like no coaches are going to get a bump.

I feel like coaches have conveniantly been added to this exemption. I had never heard about the 2009 DOL ruling (we had always been forced to deal with the $455 minimum a week for assistant coaches).