An article in the NYTimes this morning talks about schools that have not only very expensive coaches…but several of them currently on the payroll.{quote]What if a college football team not only paid its own head coach but another one? And another one?
It happens all the time — practically every time a team fires a coach. Thanks to ever-faster turnover, with coaches routinely fired after only a few disappointing seasons, many colleges are paying millions of dollars in “dead money” to former coaches even as they shell out even more for new ones. At least two major programs, in fact, are at this very moment paying for three head coaches.
[/quote]
The discussion Title relates to Texas
So at $25,100 for tuition, it takes 535 full pay students just to pay for the football coaches. I find this appauling.
I’m expecting the “Program still makes money” responses…but that doesn’t make it right. Somewhere, there are thousands of kids who could use that money. Is there a point where people say enough is enough…we’re not going to beat Alabama, so no need to chase them with high 7 figure coaches salaries? If so…does the entire profession suffer a bit (a relative description), or do things stay as they are? Talk amongst yourselves.
I think we, as a society, need to have discussions about what we want and how we are going to pay for it. I don’t understand why our elected leaders don’t run the country the way responsible people run their households.
You have a budget, right? You prioritize the things you need and want for you and your kids and then you determine the best ways to pay for it, right? Why can’t the people running the government, or running universities, do the same thing?
We already have K-12 education paid for by the public/taxpayers. Do we want health care to be paid for by the P/TP’s or not? If we do, how will we pay for it? How much do we need for defense, and science and the center for disease control and border protection and welfare and everything else we say we want?
I know your post is about football coaches and yes salaries for football coaches and their staffs are out of control. Tuition is out of control. Health care costs are out of control. Real estate, either buying or renting, is another cost that is out of control. That is why I think if we approached things from a “how much do we generate in tax revenues” as a starting point and then had a politisized but regulated by normal people not bought and paid for politicians way to allocate those resources to what we need as a society we’d be better off. Maybe college should be paid for by the P/TP’s but we are already $20 T in debt and that tells me we do not want to pay in taxes enough to cover all the things we think we want.
So what? Texas has a large and active football culture. This is just the way it is. If you don’t like it, send you kid to one of the many, many colleges without football programs.
I think we as a society just need to prioritize what we want and what we are willing to pay for through taxes. Do we want the TP’s to pay for college, health care, etc. or not? I know your post was about football coaches and how their costs affect tuition but I think in a free enterprise society that will happen.
Yes, this is a terrible waste of money and happens with college sports coaches. However, it happens with other employees (both at schools and companies). Even local high schools who “fire” an administrator end up paying out their contract. Lots of big companies,fire a CEO or other high paid executive and end up paying them for several more years. The real problem is that companies/schools are forced to have these types of contracts with employees at all. My contract where I work allows either side to end at will with no payment once employment ends - but people making millions typically sign contracts that require payment even if you are terminated.
I used to think the way you do until I moved to Alabama. Now I can see that the football program makes a lot of money for the school, and for the community (out of town game day visitors), and what it does for the feeling of community and cohesion not only for the college, but for our whole region. It also creates brand recognition for the college, which helps alumni get jobs and is a draw for prospective applicants so the school can pick brighter students which then creates better alumni and increases the value of the degree. I suspect our football program makes money for the college so that should be enough to justify it on its own merits, but then you throw in these other things, and you can truly see how much value this has. BTW I never would have thought this until I saw and felt for myself how football impacts this community.
The money for the college coaches does not come from the general operating fund of the university. Typically it comes from an athletic endowment that is specifically tied to athletics. So the idea that the money could be diverted to academics is not true.
The football coaches making that kind of money are paid entirely by the money the football program brings in. You need to worry more about fired administrators still being paid, or law suits against/by professors, or required administrative required reporting costing millions. That comes from the general operating budget.
Big college football is big business, no different than the NFL. Houston traded Brock Osweiller to Cleveland and now he will play for Denver. Again. Denver pays the league minimum ($780K) and Cleveland will pay the rest of his $16M salary.
OP and for that matter NYT has NO clue how big-time college football econ works. Texas Football has a NET profit of nearly $100 Million. More than many NFL teams. No tax money is needed or received. The profit supports all the other UT sports that lose money (most).
Want to worry about something impacting UT students–worry about oil prices. UT owns LOTS of oil wells.
Yes, the Texas football program MAKES money for the school. I know this is true because my father was head of UT’s Men’s Athletic Council for many years. He was also an engineering professor for 52 years and was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. He just retired in 2016. He is the most honorable man you could ever meet, and would not condone anything that would hurt academics.
Not following that logic AT ALL. Football is NOT taking away money from any kids!
At most colleges, football does actually drain money away from the academic side. Which is problematic.
But not at places like Texas, Penn State, Bama, ND.
At those schools, football (i) pays for itself (including writing a check to the academic side for the scholarships it uses), and (ii) pays for all of the other sports (including scholarship costs). Especially womens sports. Basically the athletic department eats everything that it kills (primarily in the form of football and mens hoops).
At a very few places (like ND), there’s still money left over that gets sent to the academic side.
It’s not Texas that should be concerned about the money spent on football-as others have noted, that football team is a revenue source which supported all male and female athletics at UT-Austin, and provided a multi-million dollar gift to the liberal arts school. The 80 slots those football players take makes no difference in an undergraduate student body of 40 thousand. By contrast, at the Ivy League and elite LACs, those teams lose money for the university, and take slots from other students competing in a small student body-80 out of 2000 at Williams.
The last paragraph about the article on the same topic from Business Insider:
“Of course, a lot of the money being spent on the coaches will come indirectly from the deep pockets of the school’s alumni and boosters. In addition, this amounts still pale in comparison to the roughly $120 million in revenue the football generates annually.” http://www.businessinsider.com/university-texas-football-coaches-salaries-buyouts-2016-11
Football is a revenue generating sport for a select few colleges including UT.
@happy1 You’re kidding right? Here is a list of just the top 25 that generate 96.5 million+ each program with football being the biggest income at each.
@moscott I understand and completely agree that the top programs do make a ton of money (hence my post that TX was not crazy to spend all that money on coaches). However if you look at all college athletic programs over all divisions more lose money than make money.
If you just look at cost of the program v. ticket sales, then yes, they lose money. However, most schools feel there is a huge value for the sports. Most athletes do not have a full scholarship, or even half, so the school is attracting tuition paying students. Many non-athletes wouldn’t attend a school without sports. The athletic department takes the budget ‘hit’ for athletic and work out facilities all students use like the pools and gyms, but if the school doesn’t have athletics they still often have a gym, pool, athletic fields.
Often the athletic facilities are money makers for school too. Personally, I’ve written a lot of checks to U of Denver as my kids have gone to day camp, sports camps, played on their youth teams, had birthday parties, gone to free (ha, ‘free’) skate, taken hockey and skating lessons, gymnastic lessons. We’ve been to many games and matches and paid to park on campus. They rent out their fields to local youth groups, their gym for high school graduations, concerts and robotics competitions. The public can buy a membership to the work out center, pool, or ice rinks.
Even my kids’ first high school made money off the athletic facilities. They had a $40 MILLION athletic center, and it was run as a business. There were baseball fields, soccer fields and a $10M pool that were rented out about 15 hours per day. You’d drive by and the lights would be on Sunday nights, there were 3-4 groups that used the pool for swim team, they even had a driving and putting set up for golf.