<p>That is very true, they lose and don’t take them to championships, the fat lady in the corner is warming up her pipes, and the coaches know it!</p>
<p>Just to throw a couple of facts into the mix regarding student athletes:</p>
<p>College Football at the highest level has 85 scholarships. Notre Dame has roughly 8000 students - so this represents roughly 1% of the population. UCLA has 26000 students - 0.3% of the student body.</p>
<p>There is also a tone above that football players are all marginal admits. Here is one that might not fit that stereotype:</p>
<p>[Player</a> Bio: Ryan McDonald - FIGHTINGILLINI.COM // THE OFFICIAL HOME OF UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS ATHLETICS](<a href=“http://www.fightingillini.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/mcdonald_ryan00.html]Player”>http://www.fightingillini.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/mcdonald_ryan00.html)</p>
<p>Excerpts from Ryan MacDonald’s page:</p>
<p>Graduated summa cum laude in May 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering … Will begin his master’s degree in the same field in the fall … Member of the National Honor Society with a 3.99 GPA in high school … Won his high school’s scholar-athlete award three consecutive years</p>
<p>I think Mr. MacDonald was likely to get in at a lot of schools with NHS and a 3.99. </p>
<p>Other football players who might have gotten into schools without an athletic boost:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cosida.com/documents/2008/11/26/2008AAAFootball.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cosida.com/documents/2008/11/26/2008AAAFootball.pdf</a></p>
<p>[Myron</a> Rolle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_Rolle]Myron”>Myron Rolle - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>No - my kids don’t play football. My son played high school baseball and was recruited - but also had a 4.6 GPA and did not get a B in a class until spring of his senior year (when he missed a month of school due to illness). He too could have gotten into many fine schools without the “athletic boost”</p>
<p>I’m surprised that the posts on this thread are comparing football coaches to the MINORITY of professors who hold tenured or tenure-track positions. That’s right: 70% of the people teaching at post-secondary institutions do NOT hold Tenure and are paid BY THE COURSE, from about $3000 per course to perhaps $7000 per course.</p>
<p>As someone with a child at at UA, with the incredibly paid coach, look at it this way - he is the CEO of a 8 digit, maybe low 9 digit enterprise (I think the licensing of shirts and hats and car stuff alone brought the uni about 50 million over the last 5 years, and that was really before saban), whose employees are 19 year old kids, some of whom did not come from stable 2 parent home environments, and all of whom get hit in the head on a regular basis (… I do hope Tebow will be OK, my heart was in my mouth as a parent).
I have heard that football pays for all sports except basketball, and some years baseball on Bama’s campus, but more importantly frees up state dollars for other purposes.
I have a bigger issue with how the university handles its academic scholarship money, even though my son is benefitting from that…Roll Tide.</p>
<p>They SHOULDN’T. But they do. Just as some football players make tons of money with only a BS/BA. It’s the entertainment industry, not academics, that rules here.</p>
<p>I did not mean to imply that ALL college athletes are marginal admits. (And, truthfully, I was talking about some players who are below the margin - well below the margin.) Myron Rolle of FSU is a Rhodes Scholar. Got the word just before the UF/FSU game last year. No doubt in my mind that guy was an excellent student. There are college athletes on campus who, academically, have no business being there. I taught some of them. When they flunk the course, the coaches call up and complain because their athlete didn’t get a pass on the class. Hard to justify that athlete’s presence on campus. After all, aren’t college and universities defined as institutions of higher education? In my mind they are just taking up space that should go to a qualified student. When enrollements are down due to budget restraints, every student slot counts.</p>
<p>Just hard to understand how some universities have let faculty and staff go due to budget cuts while simultaneously giving the football coach a raise to $4M/annual for 4 years. What - $2M/year wasn’t enough to live on? Seems like that extra $2M/year could have paid many salaries. You’d think the coaches would be team players (with the rest of the university members). After all, if those professors weren’t there to teach courses to the athletes, there would be no college football/sports. That’s why it’s called “college” football/sports. </p>
<p>Just hard to see friends let go after years of good service due to budget cuts while the football and basketball coaches gets big, fat raises. (And the basketball coach hasn’t done that great since the raise.)</p>
<p>BTW - I am a HUGE college football fan. Some have called me rabid. Still think there should be more equity in pay among teaching positions - whether it be teaching/coaching football or teaching/administrating a department, school, or college within a university.</p>
<p>They should because that is the result of the free market. People who are good at something that is valued highly can command higher remuneration.</p>
<p>A number of schools have realized that shedding the doormat label is a good thing for the school overall. Even good students enjoy having a good football team.</p>
<p>One of my favorite quotes was I think from an Oklahoma University president who made the comment that “the administration was striving to build a university that the football team could be proud of”.</p>
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<p>LOL! Seems like it, doesn’t it?!</p>
<p>A good football coach is a moneymaker for any school…more money than any prof brings in.</p>
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And what perk would that be? My dh works more than 80 hours a week for less than $150,000 a year. He has to have his arm twisted to take a vacation, he’s never had a sabbatical. I don’t know anyone who works as hard as he does and he has tenure. Many adjunct professors aren’t even paid a living wage.</p>
<p>Somewhere on the web, there was a copy of the University of Florida Athletic Department’s financial reports for the year in which it won national championships in football and men’s basketball. Its financial contribution to the rest of the university was nominal. That isn’t to say, of course, that University of Florida athletics doesn’t make a huge intangible contribution to the university, in terms of school spirit, name recognition, and promoting sales of logo items (many of which, however, run through the Athletic Department’s budget). But whatever profit Florida football and basketball were making – and it had to have been huuuuge – was either being squirrelled away in reserve accounts or used to fund non-profitable varsity sports.</p>
<p>Of course, the coaches’ shoe contracts and TV show contracts and other endorsement deals aren’t run through any institutional budget at all. Those go directly to the coaches’ pockets. If the universities wanted to capture those revenue streams, I’m sure they could, legally, but then they would have to pay the coaches even more. I am sure everyone prefers to keep those significant elements of coach compensation off of the official books altogether.</p>
<p>Any physics professor who thinks he can be a successful NCAA Division I football coach, and thereby increase his income, is welcome to try. (Female physics professors taking this route may have to try a little harder. But I suspect their success rate will not be much worse than the success rate of male physics professors.)</p>
<p>I would also note that there is a very sharp bottleneck in the coaching profession. There are lots of aides who are barely paid at all, and then position coaches, and above them three co-ordinators, and then the head coach. No one has any job security. I don’t really know, but I doubt that anyone below the co-ordinator level is paid as much as a tenured professor, and I bet that there are plenty of co-ordinators who are paid less than tenured professors, too.</p>
<p>Coaches are known as the “rainmaker” if they do well, they get money from television and alumni, (rain) do poor, and there is a financial drought.</p>
<p>Mathmom, lets make sure we keep it equal…is your DH at a tier 1 school like ND, UCLA, OSU, UVA for academics? I am sure he is worth every dime, but just like a poster can sit here and say I am an athletic football coach for college and do not make XX million we need to keep the dollar signs right. UPenn does not have a great football team, I doubt he makes millions, but the profs, make more than him by writing/publishing, public appearances and consulting.</p>
<p>To add onto JHS I wonder about the vendor contribution…does that go to the sport or the school…i.e. parking $10 -20 bucks a pop, hot dogs, popcorn, shirts, etc, etc, etc. Enough home games and you can easily hit a mill. 50K at a football game, spending $20 bucks a pop,with a 10% fee given to the school, you have 100K right there before parking, multiply 10 games and you are at a mill just on attendance and nothing to do with tv contracts.</p>
<p>Depends on the school who gets the other income. Most seem to allow the athletic dept to keep most of it. At Wisconsin they split some revenues from T-shirts and TV. The AD keeps most of what it makes but also must pay all expenses including facilities upkeep, utilities, etc.</p>
<p>Good coordinators make from $150K to a million at big schools with most in the 200-300 range.</p>
<p>“I would also note that there is a very sharp bottleneck in the coaching profession. There are lots of aides who are barely paid at all, and then position coaches, and above them three co-ordinators, and then the head coach.”</p>
<p>This point cannot be emphasized enough. You’re talking about the top 200 or so people in a very competitive profession. I know, for example, that a head coach at a top Division II basketball program makes about $150,000–not peanuts, but not superrich either. And again, he is just below the top rank in his profession.</p>
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<p>That’s the point…</p>
<p>Fewer people can be Division I head football coaches of winning teams. A greater number can be physics profs. </p>
<p>Fewer people can be Oscar winning actors…a greater number can be actors for commercials…</p>
<p>Fewer people can be star baseball players…a greater number can be engineers.</p>
<p>If you can do something “rare” and it brings in money, you will be more highly compensated. That is simply the way it is…and always will be.</p>
<p>And, BTW…some colleges do get a “cut” if the coach gets an endorsement contract because he is wearing the school’s logo during the ads.</p>
<p>It’s all about the law of supply and demand.</p>
<p>As a die hard Joe Pa fan (so don’t even think about saying anything bad about him), I often wonder how Penn State would have evolved without football. I really don’t think it would have emerged as a first rate university without the football program. Really, it wasn’t much of anything in a remote location when he arrived. My older DD got an excellent education there and I will always appreciate the role of football in making Penn State the place it is today. </p>
<p>EMM1 - AMEN! And I know first-hand what a couple of D111 coaches make and those salaries are really modest.</p>
<p>need to add to above…</p>
<p>Those rare profs that are “rainmakers” at the school are often the recipients of endowed chairs - those who are given those endowed chairs are highly compensated. </p>
<p>And, any prof can make more money by writing a book that becomes the standard.</p>
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<p>Really? How much money? At the university where I went to graduate school and, later, took a faculty position, I was required to sign a form which basically said that anything I created or invented while on campus/using campus equipment or resources belonged to the university. Most professors publish in juried periodicals and receive no compensation for their work. The profs at UF who invented Gatorade had to take the university to court just to get some monetary compensation for inventing Gatorade. Maybe it’s just the university I worked for, but I imagine these scenarios are fairly standard in academia.</p>
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<p>A close friend of my H’s holds an endowed chair at one of the Tier 1 public universities. I know what he makes (he told us). It’s not chopped liver, but the head men’s basketball coach (the school is a basketball powerhouse) makes twice as much. (He told us that too.) This friend spends most of his time doing research and writing for academic journals (which pay him nothing.) He’s written a few academic books, but they aren’t making him rich. He would never consider writing a textbook–from his POV it’s not contributing to the discipline.</p>