College Sports Coaches Making Millions- What Do You Think?
 

Read an article in the USA Today and it got me thinking. I think, deep down that it is ridiculous, although very successful sports programs bring the university money, so that is about the only justification that I can make. What do you all think?

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colle...s-database.htm

Bingo. You can't even begin to calculate the importance of the sports teams to the overall health/wealth of most any major university. You don't even need to be a very successful program to make tons of money (cough Notre Dame cough)- just one that has a solid relationship with its community/alumni.

Everyone loves to joke about Sen. Orrin Hatch making such a big deal about BCS being fundamentally corrupt & attempting to get the government involved, but we're talking about an OBSCENE amount of money here- from the obvious, direct revenue streams (TV, ticket sales, corporate boosters), but also boosting the prestige of a university over time (a large segment of the population, when choosing where to attend college, the school's teams' & success/lack thereof play a huge part in evaluating the atmosphere) contributing to increased alumni support.

I find it as ridiculous as these bailout (or bailed out?) companies asking for more $. :rolleyes:

Kentucky's Rich Brooks makes over $1 million for a lousy 6-6 team that can only win two conference games in the SEC. Is Brooks worth it? It's a high risk job. Western Kentucky's Tommy West just fired after nine years

Here's some things I learned when I was studying education in school - these are facts - not necessarily comfortable ones - or the way we might wish things to be - but facts:

Studies have shown that many, many students don't thoroughly check out a college when applying to it - they simply assume that it's a good school if it has a famous football team. It's sad - but it's true. They're fans of the team so the school MUST be good, right???
That means that if a university has a famous football team, they get more applicants. And therefore more money. And therefore can do higher-quality research, hire better teachers, fix the library, etc. Obviously if the school has a *winning* football team, these things are even more true. And you kinda-sorta need a good coach in order to win. And winning coaches don't come cheap.

i.m.o., it's one of those cold, hard facts of life. I don't like it any more than many others might; but paying a good coach a lot of money is (at this point in time) an investment that many universities feel forced to make. 'Ya gotta be in it to win it.

That's true for most of the schools in the BCS conferences. Nobody chooses Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Vanderbilt because of the football team.