This thread mentioned honorariums. Wikipedia (emphasis mine) indicates that an honorarium is “made to a person for their services in a volunteer capacity or for services for which fees are not traditionally required. This is used by groups such as schools or sporting clubs to pay coaches for their costs.”
Did school coaches traditionally not get paid? Why? Are we talking like WW2 era, or maybe the Victorian age, or is this really a throwback to the Middle Ages or before?
I can think of the following obvious reasons:
In days of old, sports coaches were traditionally rich people who coached a team on the side as a form of recreation, to schmooze with other rich people and rack up brownie points, or simply because they were bored of sipping whiskey at their summer vacation lodge. Obviously it would be an insult for gentry to take a regular workingman’s salary, so it became a tradition not to even offer one to a coach.
Sports coaching was traditionally a side activity done by people who already had a paid position. E.g. a teacher who had a full time position teaching math might do a few hours of coaching track here and there and it was assumed that they don’t get anything else because they are already faculty, stop double dipping!
Sports coaching, in olden times, required so little effort that pay would be very low anyway. E.g. a school soccer coach in 1567 would only have to show up for three hours every month and the work was so brain-dead that even drunks could do it.
At least at the time my kids were in high school (15 years ago), some of the minor sports teams were coached by volunteers, usually teachers, who did it for the love of it, or because the sport would be dropped and they agreed to coach on a temporary basis.
It may have at least something to do with the coaching happening only for a part of the school year. If football season is November to March (or whatever it is), and isn’t included in the coach’s salary, therefore stretched out over the whole 12 months, but rather paid as a lump sum, or in just two or three payments during the season, that could be part of it. The coach needs it for his travel expenses, etc., even if he either gets reimbursed, or takes them as a tax write-off-- he needs something for the initial lay-out. He also needs clothes for coaching, gas to get to practice, and the honorarium is for that, but his need for cash is concentrated in the sport’s season.
An honorarium is probably also taxed differently, so it may be that the school can give him less, but he can keep more; that’s the reason speakers are given honorariums, instead of engagement fees.
A final reason is that the honorarium may be tied either to games won, or to the door. The coach may get a percentage of proceeds, or a higher percentage if the game is won, so because the amount isn’t set at the outset of the season, it’s not correct to call it a salary. Also, it could end up being less than a living wage, if you divide it by hours worked, which would be illegal, so it’s a gift in exchange for a charitable contribution, like when you get a mug for giving to PBS, but on a different scale.
I coach at a local high school (track/cross-country). I get a stipend for track at the end of the season. It’s taxed the same as any other paycheck. Cross-country is free as the budget is only for one coach. (The head coach shares a portion of his stipend to me)
No specific clothing is required though the coaches do wear a team t-shirt for meets. Transport to meets is by district bus and i don’t think anyone ever asked for gas money for driving to practice.
Our daughter plays in several sports at get high school. All of the coaches are volunteers and receive a small stipend for the extra hours they put in. I haven’t asked them how much they get, but I’ve heard it mentioned that it want much.
I suspect we might be talking about college coaches in the era when having a professional coach was worrisome for Olympians. Think about the scene in Chariots of Fire where the coach has to sit in a rented room near the stadium, listening for God Save the King, lest anyone know his client was coached.
The attitude may well be taken from English boarding schools and college practice about Things That Simply Aren’t Done, emulated by snooty American schools a century ago. I certainly don’t think it’s common any more, what with modern labor laws and tax withholding requirements. As you probably know, in something like 40 states the state employee with the highest salary is a university football or basketball coach.
It probably varies by state; at least in Texas, sports coaches for official (i.e. non-club) sports have to be full-time employees/faculty. They are paid extra for coaching though, but it’s on the paycheck.
This caused some interesting chaos at my old private high school when they joined the UIL (the public-school sports organization in Texas). They’d had a lot of part-time coaches who were either volunteers or paid via the honorarium method, and had to get rid of them or hire them as full time employees of some sort- teachers, librarians etc…
A WAG but could it be an issue for competing in “amateur” sports? After all, the athletes in amateur competitions aren’t supposed to be paid. Maybe some sports associations also prohibit coaches from being paid in what’s technically an amateur competition. Honorariums might be a way to get around these rules.