$1.1 million to "buyout" a football coach?

[question everything]

http://www.startribune.com/512/story/846264.html

How much would a U pay a full time professor?

And what kind of a message do we send the next generation, when we "urge" them to stay in school?

[Somawas]

1. Coaches have contracts.

If you want to get out of a contract, you do a buyout.

[Ron Green]

2. Remember - it's all about the market, and the market is all about

diversion and entertainment.

[ShaneGR]

3. Unfortunately Professors dont earn their schools millions of dollars...

Take for example Ohio State. Ohio State football earns the University approximately 20 million dollars per year. That doesn't even include the amount the school earns when the team makes it into a big bowl game. The pressure of taking a Big Ten coaching position, including media and fan participation is immense.

Not sure what that has to do with "staying in school". The University fired the guy because his team sucked.

[n2doc]

6. Some do

I personally know a scientist who brought several million research dollars in to his school each year. He had a huge operation, dozens of students and postdocs. It is not as easy/common as a sports coach, but it can be done.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Most athletic programs lose money. Only the biggest ever turn a profit.

The reason more people don't know this is that many of the expenses are written into other parts of the school budget. (Stadium expenses, for example, are usually not part of the athletic budget.) Try reading "College Sports Inc.: The Athletic Dept Vs. the University" by Murray A. Sperber to find out just how much hidden expense is associated with college sports.

(Sperber has a newer book, "Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education" but I haven't read that one.)

[ProfessorGAC]

10. You've Misinterpreted Sperber

Most PROGRAMS lose money. However, big time b-ball and football programs tend to be hugely expensive but, per Sperber, more than 95% are net revenue producers. This excess revenue helps fund the other sports like track, baseball, softball, volleyball, and the like. One reason the biggest programs in men's hoops and football also field the best women's teams under Title IX is that they have the revenue to field world-class women's programs.

That's what Sperber's book actually says. I haven't read the new one yet either, but i will suspect that it has more to do with the "dumbing down" of the curriculum to accommodate declining participation standards than anything financial. That's more his message, i think.
The Professor

[Bake]

4. Basketball ...

Monson was the basketball coach at Minnesota.

Who knows (!!) how much it will cost Alabama to buyout head football coach Shula's contract. He had just gotten a contract extension last year after going 10-2 (but losing to Auburn).

Bake

[question everything]

7. Oops. Shows you what a sports fan I am not

I guess if he were a football coach the sum would be higher?

Obviously, it was the $1.1 million that caught my eye :evilfrown:

[jobycom]

5. Universities have lots of professors, only a couple of coaches, and

the coaches generate more money and more prestige than most professors. Major universities boost their image and reknown with better athletic programs. A top 20 football program draws additional students, air time, and, whether most professors will admit it or not, better professors. Most professors want a little prestige with their job. There's more prestige at a university that consistently ranks in the top 20 in athletic programs.

I do think that's wrong, and that the emphasis on the money-making aspect of sports at universities is overblown. I went to U Texas in the 90s, and watched the school change its strategy from a pro-academic to a pro-sports mentality. They began plowing up student parking lots to build practice fields for the football team, including a special field just for the kicker. Apparently football teams can't play on the same field they practice on, and apparently there has to be a separate stadium for baseball and softball. Texas fell from a top tier school to a middle second tier school academically, but they don't seem to care, since they won a national title (fictitious though national titles be).

But that's the way it is. Simple economics. Don't blame the universities, blame a society and a media that emphasizes and recognizes athletics over science, history, law, the arts, etc. I'd love to see 70,000 people pay to view the latest work of the drama department or to hear the latest lecture on economic aspects of the America's Latin American diplomatic scheme, but so far... Not happening.

[question everything]

8. Thanks. A sobering obeservation

and then... there is the U of Chicago which, in the 20s (I think) did have a winning football team and then when it had a streak of losses, had a president who declared that universities are learning institutions, not sport clubs and plowed the football field and turned it to the site of the first nuclear reaction. Fermi was on the faculty.

Today there is a beautiful peace statue by Henri Moore and a sprawling library but still no major, or even minor - I think - football team.

Of course, being a private university it commands hefty donors funds.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Hey, I'm Ok With That

I went to undergrad, and then to two of the three grad schools from which i graduated that HAD NO FOOTBALL TEAM AT ALL! (One of them had no athletic department at all.) The last school from which i got my Econ and Finance masters from had a full Athletic Department, but the other three schools had no football. Basically, it was too expensive and the schools just figured it wasn't worth the expense. The schools weren't big enough to ever make it profitable.
The Professor

[hamletsophelia]

12. when i think back on it i would pay them the same or a little better than high school teacher...

[hamletsophelia]

13. a few the exception...