To be fair, the numbers are not directly comparable. The football coach salaries are only for division I teams, which most schools don't have; the mean and median football coach salaries over all schools is probably much lower, and the academic salaries at schools with division I teams may well be higher than average.
In essence, this is comparing the average salary of the top 150 best-paid football coaches to the average for all academics. It would be interesting to see what the average of the top 150 academic salaries is.
The true injustice is how much money universities make on the backs of athletes who don't earn a red cent. And the coach salaries demonstrate the value of collegiate athletics, adding insult to real injuries.
I don't understand this view that just because you're doing work you deserve to get paid. Rowing was the first amateur sport in the United States, and if you look back at the history of why Rowing when amateur in the late 1800s then you see there are some very good reasons. The reason the NCAA is amateur is because it creates a better experience for athletes. You don't have to worry about people fixing the games, getting stabbed, being pressured to take steroids, sports overshadowing schoolwork, etc. If athletes started earning a salary then you'd see a lot of the best student-athletes give up sports overnight. I certainly would have.
Furthermore, schools aren't making money on the backs of athletes, they're raising money. That money doesn't get redistributed to shareholders, it gets added to the endowment and spent on the university. If anything student-athletes should get an income tax credit on their first X dollars earned after college rather than a check, basically a modified form of the tax credit they would get for any other charitable contribution.
* There is tremendous pressure to juice for any athlete who hopes to go pro or even be competitive.
* People gamble heavily on collegiate athletics. Of course you have to worry about fixed games.
* Look at USC, Miami, or just about any major sports school: The players barely have to attend class to remain eligible.
* No, they're making money. Take a look at the salaries of coaches, athletic directors, and college presidents and think again. If universities cared about endowments, they'd spend the athletic dollars on academics, investing in contributions from future alumni.
I highly recommend "What's My Name, Fool!", specifically the section on collegiate athletics (page 230).
It seems to me that your view of the 380,000 U.S. student-athletes is heavily skewed toward on the 200 people you see on TV. Creating policy based on this view is the equivalent of designing child protection laws to benefit the one missing white girl on CNN.
To take an example from the source I cited, Maurice Clarett wouldn't be very profitable without the other 54 players on his team, or the opponent for that matter.
College basketball + College baseball + College football = thousands of players. Even though it might be a small percent of the total, it's still a significant amount of people.
I don't think we're talking about all student athletes, here, but specifically the higher profile athletic teams (men's basketball, football, hockey).
Try to get a million+ to finance the fencing team, or women's wrestling, or (har) ultimate frisbee, or any other worthwhile, but not extremely popular, sport. The 200 people you see on TV get a disproportionate amount of the funding.
This brings up another group who makes huge money at some universities - the people managing that endowment.
From http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510756
"Former bond managers David R. Mittelman and Maurice Samuels were paid $18 million and $16.9 million, respectively, for their work at Harvard Management Company (HMC), which invests the endowment. Jack R. Meyer, the firm’s former president, received $6 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2005."
To be fair, with the skyrocketing cost of tuition, so increases the value of a full-tuition (and room & board) scholarship. While the athletes 'don't earn a red cent,' it is fair to say that they get compensated in many other ways, one of which is free tuition (for the best athletes).
At a major sports school, athletes get tons of perks - from scheduling classes early, private tutoring available in any subject if needed, room & board, clothing & athletic gear, personal medical trainers & Doctors, etc.
Of course, it is in the athletic department/University's interest to take very good care of their players -- both for the ability to bring in new talent, and also for the continued exceptional performance of the players on the field.
All that being said, there are many sports out of the typical 29 at a D-I University, that are not profitable and not generating significant revenue. Typically, from all the empirical data I've seen, that would be every sport except for Football & Basketball.
So there is a bit of 'wealth distribution' as players in sports that aren't significant money-makers still have access to full-tuition scholarships.
Technically the athletes are being compensated. Not monetarily but with an education. This may not appeal to the superstar with pro ambitions, but for a majority of athletes an education(with a full scholarship) that might not have been available if they didn't play sports is appealing. Most Div I schools go out of their way to hire tutors for their athletes, something they would never do for the average student.
Universities are only incidentally about knowledge and learning.
Please do not confuse the grant money draw that is research with either teaching or learning.
Clearly they are part of it but money is the main driver.
Money is priority #1, that's why sports are so important.
Money is important to students as well, the bulk of the income their degree will generate depends on the reputation of the school, not on how much they actually know.
And that's when they are first entering the job market.
After that first job, the only way college matters is through the relationships you built there.
Obviously relationships you build at work matter more and more over time.
And here again sports is important in creating that image of tribal success that draws the people that you want to connect with, to make it far in life after college.
That's the way life and college work.
If you don't like this harsh and cynical money based game, go to a school that doesn't have a sports program and be a scholar.
And if you do that, don't ever think about money.
If you do find yourself thinking about money, especially more then is needed to simply survive, then get an MBA... preferably from a school with a very successful sports program.
That's true in the US, but sports has barely any importance at all in British universities (and perhaps applies to the EU generally). Okay, we all know about the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race, but beyond that, there's no public exposure to university sports.
I think the focus on sports at US colleges says a lot about the US, rather than universities or the education system in general.
"Money is important to students as well, the bulk of the income their degree will generate depends on the reputation of the school, not on how much they actually know."
Only for non-entrepreneurial types.
I think for an entrepreneur (in whatever arena -- business, programming, scientific research), using college as a sort of pure, long-term investment in a general arsenal of facts and perspectives can actually pay off very nicely in the long run.
Sure, this seems unjust, mainly because none of us are professional football coaches (I'm assuming).
But I'm not sure what point the comic is trying to make, really. If this imbalance in pay pushed top academics to drop their career and switch to coaching football, I could understand the argument that it's harmful. I highly doubt that's the case.
As an academic in training(phd student), I would never want to be a football coach at a top school. The hours they have to work to remain competitive are insane. One bad season or embarrassing loss to a rival and you will be fired. I'll take the promise of tenure over the extra pay. Also as previous posts have stated the imbalance in pay is skewed by comparing top coaches with all academics. I'm pretty sure coaches at a Div III school are not paid in 7 figures, probably not even 6 figures.
Excellent point. While you're at it, make sure to include the salaries of the players.
Or are we applying corporate-compensation logic, in which all the money that a company brings in is credited to the CEO, who promptly gives himself a lavish raise?
You're preaching to the choir, I think the athletes should get a share of the pie as well.
Preferably, in fact, these unquestionably professional athletes would stop pretending to be students at all, with some sort of hybrid university-sports structure. (keeping in mind that this graph uses the top 150 college coaches; schools like Yale and Stanford unquestionably have true student athletes)
I think when discussing this it's important to get the image of the average student-athlete correct: the vast majority of student-athletes will never play pro sports, are often good students, and do it in their free time for pleasure, fitness, and love of competition. I think that this is a valuable tradition which should be maintained.
The problem is that high-level college football and college basketball, in particular, have grown from amateur sports into de facto professional leagues, with athletes who are grossly underpaid relative to the revenue gathered by the sport they play.
I'm in favor of separating de facto professional sports away from the truly amateur sports, but I think there's value in having amateur sports. (bias alert: I'm an amateur athlete who spends a lot of his time and money playing sports, and coaches a club ultimate team.)
Excellent question. The very best universities don't intermingle them... MIT, Caltech, Stanford come to mind. I know MIT has lots of intramural sports, where the focus is on healthy recreation for students. But they don't have ANY NCAA-style teams.
Stanford has one of the country's biggest and most successful NCAA Division 1 athletics programs.
"Stanford has won the NACDA Director's Cup for Division I, awarded annually to the college or university with the most success in collegiate athletics, for 14 consecutive years (1994-95 to 2007-08)."
I'm not really sure as to what you mean by NCAA-style teams. Stanford is actually the school that the sports world points to as the shinning example of excellence in sports not interfering with excellence in academics. In fact last year Stanford Basketball went to the sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. Before his career as pro-quarterback John Elway was a Stanford student-athlete. Furthermore every university in the academically vaulted Ivy league is also a member of the NCAA Division I.
Tell you what, though: when I chose between Stanford with its athletic program and Caltech with its lack thereof, I considered the athletics a knock against Stanford. I ultimately chose Stanford, but despite the athletics, not because of them.
This is just not true. MIT competes in Division III and has 41 varsity teams according to wikipedia. I'm not sure if they give out any athletic scholarships.
It's my opinion that college football players should receive salary, or at least be able to accept endorsement opportunities. There would be a decreased financial motivation to leave school early.
There's a ton of downside to this, I know, but I don't think that universities should be regulating what sort of money their students bring in.
Another way to look at it is that the university is 'paying' them with a free education, and 4 years with no financial obligations. Depending on the school, that has the potential for massive financial equivalents.
That said, let me propose a deal for you: Instead of being paid for your next four years of work, your employer gives the cash to a university. In return, the university gives you a four-year scholarship with a value equal to your deferred salary plus X%. Note that the scholarship is nontransferable, it cannot be deferred, and you cannot stretch it out over more than four years, unless the university agrees to give you a single extra "red-shirt" year. Also, if you quit your job, you lose the scholarship, so don't expect to be a full-time student unless you're really good at multitasking and don't need a lot of sleep.
How large does X have to be before you accept this offer? My guess is that it is considerably higher than zero.
Right, I think we're both in agreement here. To say that college athletes are unpaid workers isn't exactly true, but it also isn't entirely honest to say they're paid like a regular job. I responded to the parent of my post because it had been down-modded for simply saying scholarships are a form of payment.
If I were a high-school kid coming from a family with very little ability to help pay for college I'd say that sounds like fantastic deal.
Personal I would have gone to Standford on an athletic scholarship that paid less than full tuition. Few collage players can compete in the MBA and there is not a lot of paths for people with that level of skill to may any money from their sport. Few people complain that doctors need to do an internship before they make the "big bucks" because even if they are paid less than they are "worth" they are still gaining non monetary compensation.
Fine, I'll grant you that. But why are they not allowed to accept endorsements? It definitely pays better than being a bouncer at the local pub.
Some of these guys come from financially destitute situations and will leave school the minute they hear NFL so they can support the rest of their family.
It's crazy how fanatic people are about sports. I know in Europe there are gangs that kill each other based on what soccer team they support. Is this just because we can't go out and make war on the neigboring village anymore?
For the benefit of non-American people like me, can someone explain what this thing with athletic scholarships in US universities is all about? To me it just seems silly, like a sports team having academic scholarships would be.
Particularly with football, the players would not be able to afford to go to college without a scholarship, nor get into college without receiving some preferential treatment.
I'm sorry, I think I might be misunderstanding you, so I'll try to elaborate some. Each athletic program has a certain number of scholarships they give out. In the case of football, these scholarships are awarded almost entirely without regard to the academic quality of the athlete. How true that last statement is varies greatly from school to school, but in general, they only need to meet some pretty minimum requirements. If your question is _why_ do schools do this its because football brings in a LOT of money.
The same thing happens to a lesser extent with basketball, but for the most part other athletes of other sports have to earn there way in to school like everyone else.
Yes, college football is insanely popular. I live in a county of 200k people that has absolutely no trouble filling up a stadium of 90k people for home games. The skyboxes sell in the millions, and the best seats in the stands require a 10k/year donation for the right to purchase them. TV deals are also very lucrative, and I would assume so is merchandise.
I don't think UF is really very different than a lot of the other major football schools. Most of them are in pretty moderately sized cities, especially in comparison to cities with professional teams. Green Bay is the only NFL city that's college town sized.
I remember when pg wrote his essay about what messages cities send, the only message I could I think of that Gainesville sends to me is something along the lines of "You should watch gator football." It was a harsh realization, because I do like it here, and now I really wonder if this the right place for me.
The problem is that without the huge income from sports there would be no money for the scholarships in the first place. In fact I attended LSU on an academic scholarship that was partly funded by the athletic department. Yes, it's not fair that a bright student won't get the same scholarship that a dumb athlete will get, but the dumb athlete brings in millions in ticket sales that fund his scholarship and scholarships for the rest of the student body. It's screwy but our society would rather spend money watching football than on science, but until thousands of spectators will pay $100 to watch me do long division we're stuck with this system.
In essence, this is comparing the average salary of the top 150 best-paid football coaches to the average for all academics. It would be interesting to see what the average of the top 150 academic salaries is.