N.F.L. Coaches Now Reach for Next Level: College

What "academic obligations?" Many college players barely see the inside of a classroom, particularly the new 'thug' recruits who are lucky if they can spell "football."

NCAA - National Collegiate Athletic Association. Thankfully "Amateur" is not in the name, for the NCAA is hardly a bunch of amateurs. To my eyes, few organizations are more professional, and even fewer are more corrupt that NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball.
The NFL’s attitudes towards the law and women are mirrored in those of the NCAA.
No morals, no ethics, just profits.

Do you think that anyone at Michigan is going to tell Jim Harbaugh what to do? It's all about total control and power, both of which he was denied in San Francisco. Look at how the situation has recently changed with the Eagles. The owner made it abundantly clear that Chip Kelly runs the show. And as was pointed out this article, the Seahawks gave Pete Carroll everything he wanted. Total control and power are the ONLY reasons these top coaches go anywhere. Oh, how did I forget Nick Saban.

A timely article about how college football coaching can trump working in the NFL if one prizes being the face of a program, having control of it while influencing the lives of young players. And now, college coaching salaries at some schools also trump NFL salaries. A lot of comments too about the all-too-well-known evils of football.
When a college football coach makes a salary many times that of the governor of his state, the market is reflected. Is the problem with our football culture or our political culture? Fans get a lot of satisfaction and pride from a successful coach. A governor's political games are cloaked, often contrary to interests of ordinary citizens and seldom end up making anyone, except wealthiest supporters, feel good.

The NY Times is doing its best to help promote college football. College football and basketball playoff seasons are the only times public universities get mentioned in the NY Times. Other than Div. I football and basketball, Harvard is the only university in America as far as the NY Times is concerned. So Times editors, please check the role that you play in helping to promote the madness of big time football and basketball on our college campuses.

The biggest problem with college sports today is money. There's simply too much of it. And the money almost all came from a single source - ESPN. ESPN is in a unique position with their dual income streams, they don't just get money from advertisers, but also from cable subscribers. They get $5.50 per subscriber from cable, compared to just $0.17 per subscriber for the Travel Channel, or $0.35 per subscriber for the Food Network.

For those of us who want to see an end to ludicrous money in sports, it's time to cut your cable. When enough people do, cable companies will have no choice but to force ESPN into a sports tier instead continuing to include it as part of basic cable, basically making everyone pay even when they don't watch sports.

We cut Comcast, and never looked back. Between Netflix, Amazon Prime, our awesome ClearStream2 digital antenna, YouTube, Hulu and all these channels that are now streaming their own content immediately after they air, there is simply no need for Cable TV. Cut cable, cut off a major funding source for ESPN, and you will see the madness of college mad rush for football cash come to an end.

Follow the Money

I can assure you that those coaches moving from the NFL to universities are going to find themselves with yet another can of worms within the next five years; i.e., when college athletes are "paid" to play ball and universities (boosters) start exploring ways to "augment" those NCAA-approved supplements ... oh yes, and when faculties start exploring ways to keep those minimum-wage athletes eligible.

They will soon be forced to dispense with this nonsense about student- athlete football players once and for all. Don't get me wrong, it is more than a little absurd that we expect these young men (most of whom are not even old enough to order a beer at a local bar) to invest almost as much time and energy "playing" the "game" of college football as professional football players invest in their occupations ... and then be full-time "students" on top of that. This year the so-called national champion will play 15 games, and when the playoffs are expanded to eight teams, it will be 16 games.

By the way, just to get a sense of what these universities spend per athlete as compared to what they spend per FTE student, check this ...

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/assets_c/2013/01/De...

It's time to stop the farce that is college football/basketball and return colleges to the business of EDUCATION. All sports in colleges should be strictly intramural. There is no such thing as a "student athlete", they are pro-athletes who reside on college campuses. We need to divorce all inter-collegiate sports programs from colleges. College football and basketball programs are basically minor leagues/farm programs for the NFL and NBA. Let's make it official and form a professional college league. These junior pro athletes no longer have to pretend to go to class, they can just be pros and get paid. The colleges can rent out their facilities to the teams, and get their name associated with the team for marketing purposes and alumni donations.

While we're at it, it's also time to divorce inter-high school football/basketball from high schools. The kids who play in high school should play in private clubs, paid for by their own parents. Stop diverting school funding to sports programs and use it to hire better teachers, and provide after school intramural sports for *all* students.

When the one of the world's great public universities, the University of California, Berkeley, graduates only 49% of its major sports athletes while still perennially playing the role of the doormat in its conference, the sheet is pulled off the corpse. The myth of the scholar-athlete becomes a joke. Moreover, Cal is hardly alone.

When a college football coach, nominally responsible for well being of a hundred football players, is paid 10 or 15 times the salary of the governor of his state, who must look after millions of citizens, the canary in the coal mine isn't singing—it's screaming bloody murder.

Our national priorities are simply screwed up beyond belief. The almighty dollar rules this country in the end. Whether it's the NCAA or the NFL, the Koch Brothers, or Wall St., it is money that speaks loudest.

We the public are reduced to not much more than the Roman mobs: unwilling to face reality, unwilling to sacrifice, unwilling to do what we know—in the back of our collective mind—is the right thing.

Several commentors have stated that college football is unprofitable. The numbers below are from ESPN when I searched for U-M football revenue.

The NCAA recently released data regarding the most financially successful programs in the country, and Michigan ranks behind only the University of Texas in revenue and profit.

Michigan posted $85.2 million in revenues over the past year - well above the average FBS revenue of $25 million and the median revenue of $19.9 million - and $61.6 million of that was profit for the university. The top 10 is dominated by SEC schools, and the only other Big Ten team to make the cut is Nebraska at No. 10. Michigan's impressive attendance numbers have no doubt helped their bottom line, and the same is true for all the other teams on the top end of the revenue list this year. The ticket revenue generated in home games for big programs is what helps them separate from the pack.

Here is a look at the most successful programs, via ESPN (numbers are expressed in millions of dollars and are for 2012):

School Rev. Exp. Profit
Texas Longhorns $103.8 $25.9 $77.9
Michigan Wolverines $85.2 $23.6 $61.6
Georgia Bulldogs $75.0 $22.7 $52.3
Florida Gators $74.1 $23.1 $51.1
Alabama Crimson Tide $82.0 $36.9 $45.1
LSU Tigers $68.8 $24.1 $44.8
Auburn Tigers $77.2 $33.3 $43.8
Notre Dame Fighting Irish $69.0 $25.8 $43.2
Arkansas Razorbacks $64.2 $24.3 $39.9
Nebraska Cornhuskers $55.1 $18.7 $36.4

The business of (much of) American higher education is business, whether it's sports, joint ventures with corporations, or corporate sponsorship of particular research, departments, and scholarships.

Read The System by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian about the enormity of the college football business and the excesses that go along with it. The mantra is Al Davis' "Just win, baby." At whatever cost.

Regrettably, the book indicates that a highly successful college football program does bring in more university donors and increases the endowment.

Anyone reading this that thinks that a Division I athletic scholarship kid actually attends meaningful classes and has a university experience similar to their own is living on Mars. This is nothing more than an unpaid 40+ hour a week J-O-B. Making "Coach" a winner is your life. Nothing more. Oh, and the football players get C.T.E. in the bargain.

The net net of the college football game is that "Coach" runs a business within the university and stuffs all the value into his pocket via his contract. The kids get squat. They are physically used up and thrown on the scrap heap after their four years of "eligibility." They don't get any education in the bargain.

It is immoral and disgusting.

Why does all this happen? Because you want to be entertained.

A product of this system is FSU's Winston. Here's what he said after the Rose Bowl.

“If everybody in this room just want to be real with themselves, this game could have went either way. We turned over the ball a lot. We beat ourself. Just be real with yourself right now — we beat ourself.”

As the protagonist in Gladiator says, "Are you not entertained?"

Colleges and universities should drop their athletic programs the way Spelman did. They'd save a lot of money and improve the fitness of their student body at the same time.

Soon the concussion lawsuits will hit and pop, high school, and even college football will be a thing of the past. Then, the hand wringing will start about how universities lost their way and wasted countless dollars promoting a dying sport. Just wait.

Our political class castigates public schools, teachers, and parents for our lackluster academic performance. No one seems to recognize the 800 pound gorilla in the closet --- our culture could care less about academic performance. What we value most is our bread and circuses weekends. Our children learn their values not from what is said in school mission statements, but what we reward and honor. Paying a football coach more than a university president or for that matter more than an entire faculty payroll speaks volumes to the low regard our culture has for academics -- we continue to be a cultural that prides ourselves on being anti-intellectual.

There is something radically wrong here. A "College Education" for athletes becomes an oxymoron. Pushing ever further this notion of money being the major operating principle in college sports will surely be the death knell for the NCAA, which at this point, is not held in very high regard, despite their frequent self-promoting ads on TV during half time.
If there was integrity or honesty in the college big-football world, an individual or a group of individuals (investors or philanthropists) would hire players who would not have to be students. Players would wear the school colors, and be called by the school's mascot name, play on Saturdays or any other day.
Spectators and fans would still go to the games that are played in their cities.
Fans would just "adopt" the local team as their own.
The colleges could earn a part of the proceeds of the revenue by selling the name and then give that money to young people who really want an education and need financial aid. Then, all students could be amateurs, playing in games for the love of the sport, and they wouldn't have to compromise themselves or be tempted to compromise. "Coaching grown men on the professional level as opposed to coaching young adults in college"...some players in other sports, e.g, ice hockey, are now 24, 25 years old playing in college. A 24, 25 year old person is a full grown man or woman. But still, some play college sports.
The current system is way out of control.

I hate to suggest this - but if you want to understand how militarized police forces, a hegemonic foreign policy, rampant domestic violence and sexual abuse permeates American culture - it's really illustrated by our weekend obsession with football. Indoctrination in a "take no prisoners male brute force" mentality begins on the playing field and no better place to plant the seeds of aggressiveness and entitlement than with a hearty game of college football. So yeah, college coaches are way more important than NFL coaches - because professionals are pretty much past the recruiting age for the military. That's why brian trauma investigations scares the living H E L L out of football aficionados. Kids need to play football to keep the conveyor belt in tact.

Title IX is pretty much a failure at reigning in male entitlement - for now.

"Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL. We ain't come to play SCHOOL classes are POINTLESS."

-- Cardale Jones, Ohio State quarterback

It's propaganda that sports bring money to the schools. Sports are actually a net negative financially, academically, and ethically.

All the money from sports goes back into sports. Then there are the intangible financial costs of maintaining arenas, etc.

More importantly sports distract from the mission of a university. Instead of focusing on better education and better jobs, the university focuses on more sports.

The funniest line in this article was about the "need to learn how to balance football with academic obligations, and without parental supervision." The fact that football coaches make way more than college presidents speaks volumes about the misdirection of values.

"Chow, like many coaches in high-level college programs, is the state’s highest-paid state employee."

Interesting, that while conservative media constantly attacks teaching and government workers in their quest to dismantle both, sate-employed football coaches are exempt from their ire.

I was a professor at The University of Michigan (U-M) during the 1980s when Jim Harbaugh played there. Football has been king at the U-M for almost a century since the days of Fielding Yost's "point-a-minute" teams. The U-M stadium, called The Big House, holds over 100,000 more than the population in Ann Arbor. So, a successful football team easily translates into more money than they'll be paying Mr. Harbaugh. Moreover, the State of Michigan, like most states, has continually decreased the amount of funding to the U-M accounting for less than a third of the budget for one of the nation's premier research universities. Although football money goes mainly into the athletic department, a winning program does translate into more alumni giving to the university at large, and the U-M has one of the nation's largest and loyal alumni that was organized during my time there to donate to support the educational program. Consequently, big-time football can actually improve big-time education at a quality university like the U-M.

Dear parents: Let's calculate the cost of these coaches and their ilk. Look up your university's official budget at http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/schools/finances/. Recognizing that athletic departments use "doesn't count" accounting to keep things like amortization of their stadiums, utilities, buildings and grounds maintenance, police protection, parking, and the time that senior administrators waste covering up sports scandals off the books, add a 50 percent overhead charge on top of the stated expenses. Then add the subsidy that your university admits to. Divide the total by the number of students. That works out to $1000 per student per year at many of the top football factories. Enjoy the game?
Dear taxpayers: Subtract the total from your state's higher education appropriation and then calculate the proportion that serves no legitimate educational purpose.

So it has ever been. I remember reading many, many years ago in a sports book that the pecking order in an MLB team is 1) owner, 2) star player, 3) good players, 4) coaches, 5) journeyman players. That's life.

The nation is obsessed with sports. College football is big business and it has made millionaires out of young men who were living in poverty growing up. These individuals put everything they had during their youth to become a high draft pick in the NFL. They became wealthy. But there was a price paid at a national and individual level. Can the nation afford to lose the minds of all the youth who put their futures on the line for a chance to turn pro?

In her book, How The West Was Lost, Dambia Moyo discusses the misallocation of labor resources caused by the high salaries paid to our sports heroes by society. The cost she points out is not the $442,000 per week that Kobe Bryant is paid for playing basketball, but rather the thousands of young boys, and now girls, who spend a large percentage of their time chasing the dream that only one in 10,000 reach.

Society loses, not because Kobe gains. Society loses because so many children, often with encouragement from parents, sacrifice their time dribbling a basketball rather than studying in hopes of making it big. Society loses thousands of future teachers, scientists or engineers to a dream where success is stacked against the dreamer.

Thus, our addiction to sports heroes is causing us to be less competitive to other parts of the world where ;education is valued more than a great athlete.

Our universities are encouraging these false dreams. More: http://bit.ly/FF1104iitl

Something is seriously awry in higher education when football coaches are the highest paid people on college campuses.

Football coaches have more influence on players and the game in college than professional, so from a purely economical perspective it makes sense to pay college coaches more.

How the heck does a state justify spending millions on a coach while leaving their own citizens hungry, poor, cold, and defenseless? I'd be interested to see a graph plotting cuts in social service programs against increases in coach salaries.

College players usually don't hold much influence unless, of course, they are Jameis Winston, in which case their star power and profitability undermines the independence and credibility of the police, athletic department, and university administration.

Even college players can now get away with anything. They're idols.

You miss the real point here: there is no real difference between college and professional football. It is all about money and marketing. The kids are fodder just as the pros. The coaches are interchangeable as their hirings and firings suggest.

"In college, the head coach frequently has more power than the star quarterback, the athletic director and the university president."

As long as he wins. Which sets up a culture of "by any means necessary." Often the coach would rather not know the details of the anything-goes means, any more than the winning politician wants to know where all the money came from and what dirty tricks were employed.

With apologies, maybe, to Chow and Whipple, most big time college coaches care less about academics than they do about how some assistant trainer tapes players ankles.

When will the NYT publish an article on high school coaches? Where do you think that the "three QBs" come from for the college coach?

Here's to hoping that the NFL coaches heading into academia don't forget that students are there also to learn. If this is truly not the case, then college athletes need to start reaping the financial benefits accorded to professional players.

Curious as to when NCAA will issue the results of its renewed investigation into the UNC academic fraud scandal. They've been very silent on this issue for a very long time now.

Tell me again the logic against considering the colleges, as it relates to football, as nothing more than a farm system for the NFL?

NFL players have a union to stand up for them. The power of coaches in colleges is unacceptable.

Excellent article!

These guys all sound like little boy's who never grew up. Harbaugh said it well, 'something I dreamed about'. Their college years always have a pull on these people, for it is where they always think they really did grow up.

Coaching is all about winning from the NFL down to high school. Before that, it's mostly about winning. People will overlook almost anything if you win although, if you're going to hit your players, you should make sure there are no cameras on.