Jon Kitna, who left his alma mater to take the head coaching job at a Texas high school, is taking some heat for his salary.
Photo by Vince Miller
By NFL standards, a $95K annual salary is chump change.
The fact that former NFL quarterback Jon Kitna is making that much coaching high school football in Texas is causing a stir.
At least that's the case according to a
WFAA8 television story, which reports not only Kitna's annual salary at his new school,
Waxahachie (Texas), but also his assistants who reportedly will make around $70,000 annually.
That's compared to starting teachers on campus who make a maximum of $44,500.
Kitna left his alma mater
Lincoln (Tacoma, Wash.) where he coached three seasons and helped turn around a program that had fallen on tough times. His teams went 24-8 after going 12-18 the three previous seasons.
Kitna's son Jordan threw for 3,702 yards and 55 touchdowns last season, leading Lincoln to an 11-1 record. The team lost in the state 4A quarterfinals to eventual champion Eastside Catholic, which upset nationally ranked Bellevue.
When Kitna, a 1991 Lincoln graduate, accepted the Waxahachie job, he told the
News Tribune: "When I took this job (at Lincoln), it was a dream job for me. But as much as it was a dream for me, I will always have to live my life open-handedly and make room for God to do what God is going to do.
"The dream would be to stay here, the comfortable thing would have been to stay here, the ideal thing would have been to stay here. But where God is leading me, I have to follow, and I've always said that."
Jon and Jordan Kitna
Photo by Vince Miller
Kitna's final four seasons of a 16-year NFL career were spent in Dallas, which is about 40 miles from Waxahachie.
Parents at the school told the television station that the district's superintendent Jeremy Glenn was blinded by Kitna's star power. Other jobs were promised to the family's coaching staff as well, according to the report. The parents aren't blaming Kitna or his staff, but Glenn for accepting the terms.
"It's a slap in the face of every other coach, every other teacher and secretary and janitor in this school district," school parent Mark Martin, told the television station. "And these men — through no fault of their own, through their negotiating power of Jon Kitna — have negotiated salaries that double, triple the amount of most of the employees of WISD, and it doesn't seem right to me."
Texas head high school football coaches earning six figures isn't unusual.
Three Austin area coaches make at least $100,000 annually, topped out by Lake Travis’ Hank Carter at $138,984, according to this
Austin Statesmen report in June. Eleven coaches in Central Texas make at least $90,000 annually.
The
Houston Chronicle reported four six-figure salaries for football coaches in their region in 2013, and a 2011
Fort Worth Star-Telegram story reported that the average salary of 46 large-division head football coaches is $88,420 a year — at the same time teachers in the same region (grades 7-12) averaged about $50,000 annually.
According to the News Tribune, each of Kitna's five assistants last year made $5,000 for coaching. For 2013-14, Kitna was paid almost $40,000 to coach and teach part time at Lincoln.
ead more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2015/01/21/3599165_kitna-resigns-football-coaching.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy
"It's really hard to ask coaches to put in 25-30 hours a week after they work a 40-hour-a-week job," Kitna told the newspaper in January. "If you just want to show up for practice, OK, we'll go through our two-hour practice and show up on Friday. That's great. We would be mediocre, we would compete for our league title here every year and stuff.
"But at the end of the day, I can't stand average. I want to be able to compete at the highest level. I just don't think we could sustain it as is, as it is currently constructed."
