The concept of paying a college coach big bucks is that it is a business and the teams generate a lot of revenue. So it makes sense that he gets paid a lot.
If it is a business, then you have to concede that the players should get a cut of the revenue too. We don’t have metrics for how much that should be, obvi, because of the NCAA. Pro metrics are the NBA players get 49% of revenue, NFL 47-48%, MLB 48.5-51.7%.
Maybe college teams are more like minor league pro teams and so the rev share should be lower. Maybe 35%? 25%? 15%? Certainly it has to be something more than the 2.7% that the Dookies get.
So Duke’s margins are fattened because they have cartel-like NCAA rules that cap player comp. And where do you think those margins go to? It is obvious.
My apologies but I just remembered something about Duke bball.
Coach K has a notorious reputation for a “short rotation.” Which means, for those that don’t know, is that he plays very few players (of the 12-13 players total) in games and leaves a bunch of players on the bench the whole game. So, many of those bench players are there for practice and their value as practice players is how much? And that’s Duke, one of the best college teams year in year out.
@northwesty You can’t assign a professional $ value to a college player who will never play professionally.
Hopefully, and I don’t know this, at some of the money that successful football and basketball programs earn each year goes to support other sports at their respective colleges that don’t create the same revenue stream that football and basketball do such as gymnastics, wrestling, baseball, lacrosse, field hockey, etc.
I’ll try to move on. Sorry, I just think most college student athletes do get a good deal, all things considered, but for the rare athlete who is robbed of his millions.
Yes – let’s line up every job and vote on how much it should get paid, and that becomes the salary. Better yet, let’s test our 6 year olds and decide what they should do and stop wasting all of society’s time and money teaching them things they never need to know.
Get a grip people.
It’s not a perfect system, a free market economy allows everyone to make the most of their skills and abilities, and allows people to spend their wealth on what they want…a lottery ticket and 6 packs of cigarettes, a $100 bottle of wine, or a front row college football ticket. We probably don’t agree with how everyone else, individuals and institutions, spends their money, but that’s the cost of the freedom that you have to control your own investments.
And another thing…
If anyone thinks that there is a horrible injustice being done to college athletes based on “forcing them” to go to college and get paid no more than their scholarship and benefits, which are below free-market value, then there is nothing stopping you from resolving the situation. Seriously. Start a professional football league that recruits kids straight out of high school every year. Pay them $100K and up. Hire coaches, build facilities, sell tickets, and market your league. When you start raking in the cash and increasing the player salaries, you can come back and say “I told you so”, as well as patting yourself on the back for saving all of these kids from university slavery. Then you can get started on the lucrative tv contracts for your professional women’s water polo league.
The opportunity is there for you. Put up your cash and prove that college athletes aren’t getting fair market value. I’m happy to be proven wrong.
“Yes – let’s line up every job and vote on how much it should get paid, and that becomes the salary.”
Nash – you realize that the coach compensation is determined by the free market; because college sports is a business.
But the players salaries are capped. Not because the players aren’t worth something more. But because the schools got together and (to invent a phrase) “voted on how much it should get paid, and that becomes the salary.”
If we cap the coaches’ salaries, then what incentive do they have to perform better? How many SEC coaches are being paid big bucks (because SEC coaches comprise 10 of the top 25 highest-paid college football coaches) in the small glimmer of hope that one of them can form a team that will beat 'Bama and Nick Saban?
This thread has lost the main point of the OP - that many big-time sports programs are paying off at least one football coach (if not more) hoping to find the golden ticket that will lead the team to a national championship. Coach K and Nick Saban shouldn’t be included in the discussion as they have more than proved their worth to their respective teams.
IMO what we should be discussing is what is the market value of a coach who DOESN’T win?
@tutumom2001 - What we should be discussing is the impact across all colleges if the spending on athletics was reduced. In aggregate, athletics lose money for their colleges. They are an important aspect of social and educational life for students, but they are not a necessary aspect of alumnae and adult life. Students are paying for dozens of losing programs, many of them with loans.
Alabama football and Duke basketball are profitable, but most programs are not, and compete in vain to build programs by “competing” the only way they know how…throw money at the problem.
The foxes are guarding the hen house, and those with the power to make changes don’t out of selfishness and self-preservation.
To return to the first post… If your family owned UT football, would you be OK with paying 2 coaches who were long since gone but found loop-holes to make even more money than when you fired them? You would be irate, and would make sure it never happened again. Nobody owns these expenditures on a campus, and so in the name of competition schools dig deeper and deeper holes that they can never fill.
“If your family owned UT football, would you be OK with paying 2 coaches who were long since gone but found loop-holes to make even more money than when you fired them?”
What you have failed to realize is that just because you reduce expenses in the football program doesn’t mean that you are going to have more money for academics. If you owned a business and decided to downsize the IT department, are you going to spend your savings on tuition reimbursements for graphic artists? Probably not. If you owned a business and knew you could pay off an employee who was just sitting around and not making anything and hire another in his place who was more productive and bringing in more revenue for your business, would you do it? Probably.
@northwesty --yes – my opening (sarcastic) comment was exactly about what we shouldn’t do with coaches…the free market is working fine.
And, as far as player “salaries”, you missed my point – the compensation that they are getting today far outweighs what they could get on the free market as players. They are not underpaid a cash value – they are overpaid based on their value as players alone. If not, you could start up that 18-22 y/o league and pay them more. But based on their value as student athletes as part of the greater school vision/mission/image, they are apparently compensated exactly what the market will bear (in the form of their scholarships), which is more, not less, than they could make outside of the university system.
I’d say their value is about $70k, the COA at Duke. And that’s probably more than they’d make playing European ball.
If players don’t like the offer of a scholarship, they don’t have to take it. They can go pro immediately in some sports (golf, tennis, hockey, baseball) or wait until the can go pro. Why not go to school while you wait?
Europe is a different market with different player values. Not easy to compare. The same situation in reverse holds with football/soccer.
So if bench players are paid their FMV, then the superstars (who make the same as the bench players), are woefully underpaid. Or vice versa: if superstars are paid their FMV, then bench warmers are massively overpaid. Either way, someone is artificially not getting the fair market value of their skills. No volume of free sneakers or anecdata will change that situation.
You can take your pick as to which scenario holds. The evidence to me points to the first scenario: the better you are, the more you are being underpaid.
Back the OP, I would prefer all athletic money go to athletes (primarily) and the athletic department (secondarily), but since that is not going to happen, I would then prefer as much go to needy students as possible and as little go to already generationally-wealthy coaches as possible.
If the schools were really going to run college football like a business and act like team owners, what they could/should do is create a salary cap for coaching salaries.
That’s exactly what team owners in other sports businesses do with respect to their most important/expensive talent.
Wall Street Journal had an article noting a study that valued the Ohio State football program at $1.5 billion. Would rank last as an NFL franchise (Buffalo Bills worth $1.6 billion). Would be 8th most valuable NBA franchise and 12th most valuable MLB franchise.
I thought of this thread when I saw this article. Wasn’t worth seeking out this thread but because someone posted in it today to bring it back to the front page I thought I would add it.
Unless Congress changes the laws, schools acting in concert to cap salaries as $xx would be sued for antitrust. That is no different than the Ivies+MIT colluding on financial aid ~20 years ago.
Okay, This post is about, simply stated, 3 football coaches salaries equal 535 students being educated. We all understand the big money, billions, being made by few organizations, including networks and IMG that bought the rights to broadcast College football. We all know that certain and many, “non for profit” Universities are used to making big Millions of bucks off of these Football games played by kids.
The problem is that the under 21 year old kids brains are being damaged by this brutal sport called American Football. Basketball makes big money but is not brain damaging to the extent of Football, not so far as we scientifically know. Is our enjoyment of a sport worth the brains and lives of these players? Is one football players brain damage, neck broken or death worth the salaries of 3 football coaches salaries? It isn't.
Do the research if you aren't afraid of factual scientific evidence. I don't want to hear that it is more dangerous to drive..etc. We are not profiting on anyone's ability to drive a car. Coaches, Networks, and College Administration people are profiting on this brutal sport because their salaries show it.