Pension racket: Retired Illini athletic director collects $500K annually

Call me old fashioned if you like, but I still believe that a pension should be for providing financial security to someone who is too old or too ill to work anymore. It should not be delayed compensation.

Perhaps for some people $500,000 a year is their idea of financial security.

From the Chicago Tribune:

When the University of Illinois gave a large pay raise to its longtime athletic director a decade ago, it offered an example of the ever-increasing salary arms race to lure and keep college coaches and administrators.

That raise for Ron Guenther has also quietly become an example of just how much the arms race can cost the state’s struggling pension funds years down the road, as Guenther’s annual university pension approaches $500,000 a year.

Yes, that's a taxpayer-funded pension.

A University of Illinois professor, Jay Rosenstein, did some research on program to keep professors and people like Guenther from bailing on the college.

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He argues the salary arms race was sold to taxpayers as a win-win: that the university could pay big bucks to keep and lure talented people, who in turn could produce a program that would bring in more than enough money to cover those higher salaries.

Instead, he said, the university and its students subsidize the program, and taxpayers contribute to large pension tabs years later. He tabulated the cost of retirement checks for 18 former U. of I. coaches and sports administrators at more than $2.6 million a year — with Guenther topping that list.

"Amatuer" college sports is an expensive racket, just like public-worker pensions in Illinois. Yes, even at my alma mater, which for the most part has crappy sports teams.

I wonder how much Guenther paid into the pension fund?