Cost of collegiate football and basketball coaching salaries both disproportionate and unnecessary

College football and basketball coaches back in the old days were simple men with simple ideals: They weren’t flashy, but to the point. They served to improve the welfare of the school by winning games — similar to how professors do so by producing research — and therefore, generated solidarity between themselves and the student body they worked for.

Nowadays, it’s a bit more complicated. Division I football and basketball coaches are no longer college faculty whose salaries consist of student’s tuition money. Rather, they’re more like rationally autonomous, money-seeking agents, or maybe rock stars. Over the years, they have managed to separate themselves greatly from the academic institutions, which they supposedly represent by taking advantage of the college budget crises that have been plaguing higher education.

Everyone is aware that many colleges across the country have been strapped for cash lately. The recession and austerity measures imposed upon them by state legislatures caused this predicament. What many might not know, however, is that college football and basketball coaches’ salaries have soared amidst this collegiate budgetary decline.

This is a result of coaches being able to use their highly visible positions to obtain funds from other, private investors, who mutually benefit from a successful coach. Basically, in order to afford a top-tier coach, a college must have funds funneled in from other sources in order to pay his salary. In return for their investment, private interests receive lucrative marketing rights through the team they now partially own.

However, there are some apparent benefits that these contracts bring to schools. For instance, if Nike agrees to pump some cash into your college’s basketball program, the company will pay for all of your athletes’ equipment and whatnot. The only supposed stipulation is that every basketball, jersey and sneaker better have a Nike swoosh on it. That has the potential to ease a lot of financial strain on a school’s athletic department.

The problem with this is that many big-time coaches have started to lay claim to these funds that would otherwise go to the students. It’s not like before when coaches such as John Wooden ensured that private investment money went solely toward the school’s athletic department. Alternatively, it’s not unheard of now for coaches such as Alabama’s Nick Saban to have a $7 million per year contract, a good portion of which is paid for by private investment.

These private investments have become so obvious that they can be found right in some coaches’ job titles. Take Duke’s assistant football coach Scottie Montgomery, for instance. Actually, he’s not just an assistant coach; he is officially “the Baxter family associate head coach and offensive coordinator,” a title he received after a promotion in early February. Similarly, Stanford coach David Shaw is “the Bradford M. Freeman director of football,” and Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald is “the Dan and Susan Jones family head coach.”

Apparently, like college libraries or lecture halls, college coaches need wealthy and charitable sponsors in order for them to exist on campus. I suppose it’s generous for private parties to provide the funds for a coach, thus, saving the athletic departments some cash. But why do coaches need such bloated salaries, when that private money could go toward so many other things?

Undeniably, good coaches can do wonders for a program’s reputation and recruitment, but a good coach should also care about the institution he or she personifies. To that end, college coaches should not take private investment money that could otherwise go elsewhere — to students, perhaps.

The beneficial attention coaches bring to a particular school is outweighed by the cost of their bloated salaries. For instance, According to a NCAA report, only 14 of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money from campus athletics in the 2009 fiscal year. Oddly, football and basketball coaching salaries rose during this time.

It isn’t a stretch to think there’s a correlation here. If big-name coaches didn’t come with such a hefty price tag, I doubt this would be as much of a problem. Still, football and basketball will always be seen as huge breadwinners for schools, even if numbers don’t add up. They bring attention to schools that would otherwise go unnoticed. Boise State is a prime example of this: It was a school unbeknownst to national audiences prior to the eventual success of their football program. The success and exposure of these programs will always serve as a justification for college football and basketball coaches’ high salaries.

Still, the proportion of coaching salaries to collegiate budgets remains unstable. If football and basketball coaching salaries continue to rise, the potential for other sports programs to be cut in order to compensate for the attention-garnering favorites is possible. The mission of a university is not to create a football or basketball empire with a five-star general at its head; the mission is to instead, create opportunity, something inflated coaching salaries undermine. 

Write Nick at njv10@pitt.edu.