College Football Can Afford to Come Down a Few Pegs

Penn State is paying Joe Paterno a million dollars a year, a figure that's in line with what big-time college football coaches get. Such extravagant compensation raises questions about football's contribution to the educational experience at instututions of higher learning. More importantly, it raises questions about the values these colleges are teaching America's young people.

At the University of Oklahoma, for example, head coach Bob Stoops will receive $35 million for the next seven years. In recommending approval of the contract, former Senator David Boren, now the president of the University, said Stoops deserves the money because he's the "best" in the country. What is Stoops good at? Why, winning, of course.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/6993945/oklahoma-gives-coach-bob-stoops-7-year-extension-worth-345m

I get appeals for financial support from my own alma mater, which pays the football coach $2 million a year. The letters tell me how difficult it is to attract world-class faculty these days, and can I help out? I know that the football program keeps a staff of lawyers busy on Title IX issues. You can't pretend there's any gender equity when a male-only sport runs of bills the way football does.

And now, we're finding out, at least one these big-time coaches doesn't have the character to report a child molester to the police. That's some example to Penn State students!



Sen. Boren: Winning is all that counts

Hell, small programs in the Mountain West (Wyoming, Colorado State, New Mexico) pay that.

I don't know where Bleacher Report got its data from, but I just accepted their figure. The coach at the University of Texas gets paid $5 million a year. If I were a Texas alum receiving poor-me letters from the college president, I'd be pissed.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/643170-college-football-you-get-what-you-pay-for-2010-coaches-cost-per-win

Interestingly, the service academies are paying fancy salaries to the football coaches. Where is the Tea Party when you need them?



Navy coach gets $900,000

Overall, I agree with the questions you are raising. However, there are some schools that are able to provide, AT A NET PROFIT:

1. Events that unite the student body (yes, I know there are "those" people who hate football, but it unites the majority).
2. Opportunities for poor minority students whose only hope for attending college is an athletic scholarship.
3 Fully funds another 7-10 male sports (baseketball sometimes makes money).
4. Fully fund enough women's sports (of which, ALL lose money) to provide for an equal number student-athletes.

Now, you go to most schools and the student-athletes are held to higher academic standards than the general student population and tend to outperform them (statistically speaking). And many schools, they do all this and give excess money to the schools.

70,000(+) seats x $50(+) = $4,000,000(+) x 9 games = $36,000,000(+) plus possible bowl games, plus merchandise sales. It isn't that I don't think the salaries are a bit excessive, they are likely justifiable from a return on investment standpoint.

for many schools football coaches pay themselves and pay the freight for many so-called lesser sports with ticket sales etc.
Well known football programs also bring in students to the university.

Again, this doesn't make it right. But the athletic program does not exist in a vacuum.
If you think of college sports as entertainment, then $3mill or so is probably not out of line for the 100 or so people in those positions throughout the country.

They have to pay to participate, pay to transport and lodge the students and staff, pay for any unsold tickets, etc. It's an enormous expense, and I doubt many schools get enough of a merchandising bump to offset it. The bowl system primarily enriches the bowl committees.

although most schools have to share some or all of that payout with their conference.

On edit: that's not to say that expenses don't exceed the bowl payout--it does for some schools.

In most cases, the football program itself, through ticket sales, TV contracts, concession sales, and big ticket donors. In fact, the two big college sports, football and basketball, not only pay for themselves, but also pay for a number of other college sports, including women's sports.

What does football contribute to the college atmosphere, well, I heard an interesting explanation over the weekend. Football is akin to the front porch of a house. It isn't the most important part of the house, structurally. But it is the most visible part of the house.

Football and men's basketball brings in students. It also brings in donations, not just to athletics, but to other programs. The athletic programs, like it or not, are the most visible part of a college to a college recruit. Kids, in gradeschool, identify with a particular college due to their athletic programs. A high school grad, who has been a life long fan of a particular college football team, is more likely to apply and attend that college than any other.

Athletics also provide a common touchstone for an entire campus. When you've got twenty, thirty, forty thousand students, from diverse background, in diverse areas, college sports give them a sense of unity, a sense of commonality and community that would otherwise be lacking.

And the simple fact is, sports are fun, fun to participate in, which is why most colleges have intermural sports programs in addition to varsity sports(and the intermural sports are generally paid for by revenues from the varsity side), and fun to watch. You take out an afternoon each week to gather with your friends, have a couple of beers, eat some good food, and then get to go yell and scream for your team. College students, as well as the rest of us, need to blow off steam, and it has been shown that athletics, whether participating or watching, is a good way of doing that. Lowered stress levels, a good thing.

Even the most academically prestigious schools recognize these facts. That is why they have athletic programs, including football.

Northeastern University, Boston University, Hofstra, ....etc., etc.,

Intercollegiate football is unnecessary at an academically prestigious schoool.

And many academically prestigious schools have limited intercollegiate football programs that emphasize the sporting aspects, rather than the entertainment and medica business aspects, e.g. the Ivy League.

The cried for funding, so we gave it to them. They then proceeded to totally tear up the athletic field and install a brand new score sign, complete with video play back. Meanwhile the school itself is old brick and masonry and was in danger of being condemned since we're in an earthquake zone, they finally started to work to fix the actual school, but not before they came back begging for even more money. I should have told the canvasser to shove it when they inquired about getting me to choke that down.

tuition ever spirals upward and academic programs face threats of constant cuts.

:sarcasm:

If you're not a sports fan (like I'm not), you could get the idea that the sports program at OSU is actually some kind of "safe harbor" for crooks and cheaters of all kinds. Hardly a week goes by that there isn't a story about this or that athlete, or coach, or program director, or former player, doing something sleazy. Players are constantly being suspended due to criminal activity.

I majored in Electronics Engineering and graduated from OSU. I think of it as an academic institution. But football is glorified here as if Columbus were some tiny town in the Texas desert. Crooks or not.

The vast majority of which was cycled back into the university academics and other (non-mens and non-football) sports programs.

Half of the library at University Park is the Paterno library. The Paterno family contributed $5 million of their own money to its construction. Half of the books in that library were bought by the Paterno trust, which the Paterno family pays for, but librarians and academics control. Paterno paid for the PSU classics program, and an endowed chair in the English department.

There's no doubt that Paterno is morally culpable anhd should be fired, probably immediately. But if you're looking around for examples of overpaid football programs that do not contribute to the academic and intellectual life of a university, I'm afraid you're going to have to look elsewhere than Happy Valley. It's just a factually untrue claim.

Minuscule percentage of total profits for one year given to academics isn't exactly a generous contribution, especially when you keep raking in those profits year after year and put most of 'em back into athletics.

They can't negotiate a salary, have to follow a set of absolutely arcane rules, and have only limited eligibility until you clean them all out for the new set of young cheap labor.

The money in NCAA division 1 football is certainly outrageous.

programs, football makes the non-revenue sports possible. I am not apologizing for Big Football in the least, but the fact is that at many state schools, the appropriations - often overseen and flyspecked by neanderthal state legislators - the money would not be there for the non-revenue sports absent the money brought in by football (and basketball as well). Of course this is not true at all schools, but it is at many.

The system is fundamentally broken and needs to be reformed from the ground up.

Healthy exercise and physical education is one thing. But the multi-million dollar factory assemblyline to the NFL begins there. School should be limited to cultivating the mind. Football in America's high schools cultivates the anti-intellectual bent so prevalent in this society. You're either a jock or a nerd when you're young. I went to Europe for one year of high school when I was young, many years ago. They offered gym, but no organized teams. If you wanted to excel in a sport, you joined a team outside of school and participated on your own time. In high school there were no terms for jocks or geeks. There were no teams, no homecomings, no jock cliques, no proms or dances, but only academic study while on school premises. Getting the highest academic score in a particular subject was universally seen as a good thing, not death to someone's dating career because it made someone a nerd. And dating and social sexual interraction occurred outside of school entirely.

It really depends on the area you live in.

Here in Massachusetts with sports, if you aren't doing your work in academics you don't play. My guy has coached here for many years. He does it because he loves the kids and the game. They monitor the schoolwork, the homework and what happens off the field. In fact this year the Varsity lost a half dozen kids for the year, all starters, because they were found to be at a party where drinking, etc was going on. He has formers players who run the gambit as far as what they did after high school. He has some that have graduated from Ivy league schools, some from top engineering schools, one who plays for the major league baseball and some who have gone completely on the wrong track, falling to drugs or crime, etc.

Sports players get their cues from the community and from the schools and coaches. It can be good or it can be bad. I've only seen the good. Both in my guys life, his son's life and in my own son's life.

This is coming from a geeky, nerdy, gamer chick, former "bandie" who never thought she would fall in love with a "jock".

You said the magic word anti-intellectual and you collect $100. Republicans distrust learning and prefer an ignorant population. It would be interesting to compare the areas where the Republican war on science is most prevalent and the places where Big Football is worshipped. I'll bet they overlap.

May the pigskin gawd strike your television set with a lightning bolt!!