<p>The conservative Richmond Times-Dispatch published an editorial today complaining that the U of Virginia and Virginia Tech spend too much money on football coaches' salaries. The editorial complains that the schools insist that additional money is needed from the legislature for academic operations, when many new professors could be hired if the coaches' respective $1 million salaries were cut by half. Not a likely prospect given the big business nature of major college sports (a point readily admitted by the newspaper editors). The newspaper pleads that the 'lofty' UVA [and VT] will start a revolt that will reign in big money college sports and return the schools' financial priorities to academic concerns.</p>
<p>Much of the money that is used for football coaches salaries come from non-state sources. Further, compare how many students a coach works with and how much time they spend with them as compared to a professor.</p>
<p>Typical idiocy. Virginia and Va Tech have never known as much financial success in football and paying the head coach a competitive salary is a key to having a financially successful program. My school for decades followed the low pay model and the athletic dept was essentailly bankrupt when the new president decided to go the other way. A good coach was hired at a high salary. 15 years later the dept is finanacially flush, the facilities have been improved beyond our dreams, and on the field performance has been very good--3 Rose Bowls, multiple NCAA basketball tournaments including a Final 4, etc. The success of the sports program has made the school better known and more atttractive nationally. It has been a total win-win success.</p>
<p>Barrons, your comment raises a question I've had for many years: why do colleges think athletics are important, anyway? Yes, it's traditional, but really, why do colleges need to be the farm teams for professional football, basketball, etc.? Shouldn't they be more concerned with academics?</p>
<p>Tell that to the 83,000 or so who come to the stadium to enjoy the games and the millions that watch on TV.. It becomes a common event for the university and the citizens to share and enjoy. Why do universities need fancy stone buildings when concrete will do? I don't think it's just the university admin, it's the alumni, regular citizens of the state, the students. It's something a lot of people just happen to enjoy and needs little more justification.</p>
<p>Academics can thrive on their own but I have yet to see 80,000 pay to see a lecture on a Saturday. I doubt the UW prez spends more than 1% of his time on athletics.</p>
<p>Dmd77 asks, "Barrons, your comment raises a question I've had for many years: why do colleges think athletics are important, anyway?"</p>
<p>Response: Besides the money raised by the thousands who attend each athletic event, you have the greater alumni support that can be tremendous. I went to U of Miami Law School before Miami was a sports powerhouse. They had a mediocre endowment at the time. Now, with the endowment approaches 1 billion. In addition, strong sports programs enhance strong school spirit, which I would argue encourages more applicants= higher admission standards. </p>
<p>In addition, strong sports programs improve facilities for excercise science and related majors plus put the college on the national scene. Bottom line: paying a coach top money to "insure" a top performing team makes a lot of dollars and sense!</p>
<p>My my dmd, how proud you sound to have stopped making donations to your school. To each his own, you obviously do not approve of athletics, others do. You have chosen to make your opinions known with your check book, I am sure other alumni of your private school were more than happy to open theirs to pay for the new athletic facilities. MIT is a specific type of school that attracts a specific type of student.</p>
<p>I think successful sports schools can show a positive correlation with fundraising but that's not really all that important. My giving to academic areas is pretty separate from sports enjoyment and more dependent on my income that year.
So long as the sports are generally self-supporting and/or any school support is supported by the students, the other benefits are enough. Anything else is gravy.</p>
<p>This arguement is brought up every once and a while, and has no basis for merit. (redundant?) Coach K might make 4 or 5 million a year, but he brings in that many more students to Duke than would normally go there. (Check out the Duke thread and see how many students apply there just because of the basketball program) Take away major football and basketball programs from big schools, and you would have to double tuition and turn them into LACs because noone would go there.</p>
<p>I'm fine with it, too. I just wish they paid the players more than they do the coaches (as they do in the pros). After all, it is the players that make the money for the owners....I mean "the university", and keep the alumni happy. </p>
<p>I mean they could be making money off porno movies....;)</p>
<p>Yes, college sports are widely enjoyed, but don't mistake popularity for populism</p>
<p>My father-in-law has taught at a large midwestern state university for nearly forty years, and for almost that entire time he has had the same seats for men's basketball games. (We're talking about a major program here, a huge money-maker, one of the elites of college hoops.) About three years ago, the AD decided that his seats, and those of everyone else in his section, were just too potentially lucrative to continue to sell at face value to longtime faculty members, staff, and local businesspeople. Instead, a new system was put in place that gave him and others the right of first refusal but effectively made it far too expensive for them to continue buying their longtime tickets, which eventually went to large, non-local donors. Meanwhile, people who had sat together for decades found themselves separated and ghettoized, forced into cheap seats--if they were lucky enough to get seats at all. The AD was well within its rights to change the system in pursuit of greater profits, but all in all it was a sad situation--a reminder that sometimes decency is measured by what we're not willing to do even when we can. If we want to be an "ownership society," we have to be careful not to sell our souls.</p>
<p>Where do those profits that the top 50 programs make, go? Do academic programs benefit from any of that $$? Is any of it used to ensure that the athletes actually get an education while they're in attendance? Have the graduation rates of the athletes improved at all? I'm honestly curious because I'm not familiar enough with college athletics to know the answers.</p>
<p>My understanding is that most athletic programs at big-time schools are largely self-funded, with profits from major sports going not to beef up the unversity's broader academic programs, but to support other sports that don't generate revenue.</p>
<p>I'm not an expert, but what research I've done shows that money made by sports stays in sports. It doesn't help the academics. It doesn't hurt them either. Football is very expensive and if you have a powerhouse team you can make money - if not it can be a huge money loser which is why smaller schools like Swarthmore don't have it, and some schools like BU dropped it. If you don't want your alumni money to go to sports you can specify it for something else, such as scholarships.</p>
<p>GROUCHO(As Dean Quincy Wagstaff): Have we got a stadium?
FACULTY: Yes.
GROUCHO: Have we got a college?
FACULTY: Yes.
GROUCHO: Well, we can't support both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.</p>
<p>--From "Horse Feathers", 1932, starring the Marx Brothers</p>
<p>At the very high end, the football coaches salaries are way out of whack. Not only do they make more than the professors, they make more than the university president. In several states the head football coach at the state U is the highest paid public employee in the entire state, including the governor.</p>
<p>I like a good college game on Saturday afternoon as much as the next guy, but they should give up the "student athlete" pretense. They should just admit that bigtime college football is the de facto NFL farm system and run it as such --> Keep nominal college affiliations if you want but pay the players a decent wage, bring coaches salaries in line with their minor league status, make the NFL subsidize any costs not covered by ticket sales and TV rights so that the colleges don't have to waste any of their resources on it.</p>