TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Senate education committee heard nearly two hours of discussion on Tuesday in Tallahassee on high school athletics in Florida, including the growing issue of rampant transfers and the need for better pay for coaches in the state.
The Florida Coaches Coalition and the Florida High School Athletic Association took ample time laying out details for the committee on the growing need for help from the state to address a slew of issues.
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Two of the biggest ones in Florida are the state’s athletic transfer portal, buoyed by open enrollment and toothless transfer policies, and the need to bring coaching pay into the 21st century.
Andrew Ramjit, the executive director of the Florida Coaches Coalition, detailed the pay issues around the state’s supplemental pay model that has dogged the coaching profession in public schools for years. Coaches receive a supplement for their work as a coach. As a head football coach, those range from a low of $3,038 in Broward County to a high of $8,317 in Broward County. That’s for a full year of work. The Coaches Coalition has asked for minimum wage for all coaches in all sports in Florida.
“Extremely encouraged. If you look over the last 40 years, when we’re talking about coaches, coaches compensation, you haven’t seen movement or momentum like we have right now,” he said. “This is our second trip to Tallahassee this year, and the hope is there will be a bill in front of the House and Senate come January. So the momentum has been wonderful, and couldn’t have asked for more.”
Former Florida State football and basketball star and 1993 Heisman Trophy Charlie Ward was on hand for the meeting and spoke in front of the committee on how dire the coaching pay situation has become. Now the men’s basketball coach at Florida A&M, Ward got his start coaching at the high school level and said still had the ability to make money as a speaker during his high school coaching days. That didn’t apply to his assistant coaches who he said struggled mightily to make ends meet because the pay was so low for so many hours.
“They get left out of negotiations,” Ward said. “We’re talking about the teachers unions and those types of things, and so this is very important for me to be a part of it, because I’ve lived it.”
News4JAX has tracked the coaching salary issue for more than 10 years, detailing massive disparities in pay of coaches in Florida and other states like Georgia, Alabama and Texas.
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Ramjit presented some of that data, and Republican Sen. Corey Simon acknowledged just how jarring it was. Simon was a former star at Pompano Beach Ely High School who went on to star at Florida State and become a first-round draft pick of the Eagles in 2000.
Simon’s final remarks before dismissing left a powerful mark. He mentioned former Miami Northwestern head coach Teddy Bridgewater’s situation that pushed him out of coaching and back into the NFL. Bridgewater was suspended by the school district after he solicited donations from the community to help fund things for players. In a post on Facebook over the summer, Bridgewater said he’d spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money to help players. That included Uber rides, paint for the field, recovery treatments and pregame meals. Those were deemed impermissible benefits and Bridgewater was suspended for a year after he’d already announced he’d be returning to play in the NFL.
Simon said Bridgewater picked up the reins to help kids when it should have been the community stepping up to help.
“The money that we’re paying coaches now, that money doesn’t go to them. It doesn’t. It goes back into the team. It goes for paying for pregame meals. It goes for getting kids shoes so that they can participate on the court, on the field. It goes into transportation, all of those things. Those coaches and their families never see that money. That money is in one pocket and out the other pocket.
“It’s important for me to have this conversation, because I think oftentimes, we just think of sports, ‘oh yeah, it’s great.’ But it’s the economy of all of our local areas. Football is the straw that stirs the drink in the state of Florida. When Florida State or FAMU is not doing well, the economy is hurting, and it plays that same difference in our high schools all across this state.”
Where any potential money comes from remains a sticking point. Ramjit brought up the option for booster clubs being allowed to contribute directly to coaches, something that is currently a county-by-county decision. Not every school would have the same ability to pay coaches through booster clubs, something that was brought up by the superintendents of Okaloosa and Walton counties.
FHSAA executive director Craig Damon spoke about the numerous issues facing sports, including the rampant transfer issue. Damon said he’s an overwhelming supporter of the state’s school choice option but thinks something needs to be done to address the transfer portal era of athletics. The FHSAA has measures to address transfers, but state legislation has largely zapped the power to enforce it. Currently, students can go from school to school as long as there is space for them at the accepting school. And school districts have wide latitude on whether to accept students under a good-faith clause.
Damon said he supports the ability for parents to move their children to a better academic situation, but said there’s something that doesn’t sit right with people when a student is transferring from an A- or B-rated school to one with a D academic grade just for athletic purposes.
Damon mentioned a well-known case of an athlete in the state whose season ended at one football program in the regular season, and that player then transferred to another school that had qualified for the playoffs.
The FHSAA largely uses self-report methods or has to lean on other schools turning in an offender to start the investigative process. And even when doling out punishment well within its bylaws, the FHSAA faces legal issues in enforcing it. The First Academy in Orlando was barred from the playoffs last year and this year for myriad violations. Parents of TFA players last week sought to have that penalty for this year overturned and have threatened legal action if it wasn’t granted.