Without a list of finalists, the UNC community will have to trust that Bubba Cunningham was, in fact, the best man for the job of athletic director. Given his track record of success at Ball State University and, most recently, the University of Tulsa, there’s every reason to believe that Cunningham will prove his worth to the University. But that will take a lot, and not just because of the issues facing the University’s athletic department.
Per the terms of his six-year contract, Cunningham will earn an annual base salary of $525,000, with the possibility of four bonuses totaling $175,000. His predecessor, the outgoing Dick Baddour, agreed to a base salary of $295,000 — but with six potential bonuses — when his contract was extended in 2009.
In explaining that $230,000 base salary jump, Chancellor Holden Thorp said Baddour required less compensation because he was hired from within the University. Cunningham, on the other hand, was a highly attractive external candidate who oversaw a league-best 34 Conference USA championships since arriving at Tulsa in 2005. Cunningham’s salary will also be commensurate with fellow ACC schools like Boston College, Clemson and Georgia Tech, where the athletic directors receive salaries of about $600,000, according to USA Today’s 2011 athletic director database.
According to that same database, Cunningham received a salary of $374,964 at Tulsa, closely matching the $350,000 salary that Florida State and Virginia, both ACC competitors, pay their respective athletic directors.
As the candidate who immediately rose to the top of UNC’s list and those of other colleges, Cunningham had a market value that clearly deserved a raise. But the prospect of taking the reins of one of the top collegiate athletic programs should have carried more weight. And a salary almost twice the size of his predecessor’s comes at a questionable time for a university that has tried this semester to increase student fees to salvage some of its Olympic sports.
Cunningham’s high salary comes with a tall order. Beginning Nov. 14, it will be his responsibility to steer the athletic department into calmer fiscal waters. And it will be his duty to instill a culture of compliance.
This will begin with the sport that led to Baddour’s resignation: football. Cunningham must evaluate interim head football coach Everett Withers and weigh that review against the qualities of a national pool of applicants. First among those qualities should be discipline and an absolute intolerance for conduct unbecoming of a student athlete.
At a press conference Friday, Cunningham read from a script that could have been lifted from a NCAA advertisement. He recognized that few of 850 student athletes he’s now responsible for will play professionally. It was a canned, oft-repeated line for someone in the realm of collegiate athletics, but it struck the right tone given the violations that ultimately led to his hiring.
That should be the theme of Cunningham’s initial years. It’s what the University has needed and paid handsomely for.
