not Political Cartoons Thread MK II

[nesaminos]

My roommate, who is considering being a college professor after grad school, nearly cried when seeing this.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

My roommate, who is considering being a college professor after grad school, nearly cried when seeing this.

Is it that surprising? I mean, it's widely known say at UMich that the coach gets a million a year.

Never mind getting to the top of academia is something only 1 in 1000 or so grad students can achieve.

[Mr Bean]

On the one hand that is very interesting and very sad.
On the other hand, yet again it's not a goddamn political cartoon!

[Alyrium Denryle]

My roommate, who is considering being a college professor after grad school, nearly cried when seeing this.

Is it that surprising? I mean, it's widely known say at UMich that the coach gets a million a year.

Never mind getting to the top of academia is something only 1 in 1000 or so grad students can achieve.

It is not surprising. It is just fucking disgusting. There they are, professors and grad students, the ones who basically are the university. Teaching students, doing research, after each one spends over a decade working 12-16 hour, toiling thanklessly in obscurity just to get their Ph.Ds... getting paid a pittance compared to the trainer for the university side-show, the equivalent of bread and circuses.

It is fucking sick

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

It is not surprising. It is just fucking disgusting. There they are, professors and grad students, the ones who basically are the university. Teaching students, doing research, after each one spends over a decade working 12-16 hour, toiling thanklessly in obscurity just to get their Ph.Ds... getting paid a pittance compared to the trainer for the university side-show, the equivalent of bread and circuses.

It is fucking sick

Not going to argue with that, but so long as the NFL itself has coaches paid that much, and College Football being nearly as popular, it's no surprise that the coaches are paid that much.

Not least, among the undergrads, they regard a strong football team something of a school pride.

[Tanasinn]

The fact of the matter is that college football brings in more bucks for the university, while boosting morale among those students who actually care. It's advertising in a way, too.

I don't like it, but I understand why it happens.

[Fleet Admiral JD]

BU doesn't have football, but I have to wonder how much Jack Parker (our hockey coach) is getting paid, compared to most of my professors here.

[CarsonPalmer]

The fact of the matter is that over 100,000 people turn up to Michigan Stadium every Saturday to see the team play. Are the coaches hideously overpaid? Yes, absolutely. Coaching salaries have gone through the roof to a disgraceful degree.

However, that salary is basically a null, because the money being used to pay exists because of football madness. We'd be much better off if the money taken in from football games was spent on the university, but if there was no college football culture, you'd lose the enormous profits (the University of Notre Dame made six million dollars the last time they went to a bowl game) as well as the enormous salaries. As it stands now, sports are a net zero at many schools. They can be made into a positive, but dropping them doesn't mean that the head coach's salary is now figured into the university's budget. The money just isn't coming in any more.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The fact of the matter is that over 100,000 people turn up to Michigan Stadium every Saturday to see the team play. Are the coaches hideously overpaid? Yes, absolutely. Coaching salaries have gone through the roof to a disgraceful degree.

However, that salary is basically a null, because the money being used to pay exists because of football madness. We'd be much better off if the money taken in from football games was spent on the university, but if there was no college football culture, you'd lose the enormous profits (the University of Notre Dame made six million dollars the last time they went to a bowl game) as well as the enormous salaries. As it stands now, sports are a net zero at many schools. They can be made into a positive, but dropping them doesn't mean that the head coach's salary is now figured into the university's budget. The money just isn't coming in any more.

There are costs other than monetary. Schools with a football culture attract people who really should not be in university in the first place. The school faces two choices then. They can flunk these people out, which is the better option, or the programs these people enter (read: communications and undergrad psych programs) get dumbed down. This devalues everyone's degree. It is bad for everyone

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

There are costs other than monetary. Schools with a football culture attract people who really should not be in university in the first place. The school faces two choices then. They can flunk these people out, which is the better option, or the programs these people enter (read: communications and undergrad psych programs) get dumbed down. This devalues everyone's degree. It is bad for everyone

That could be said of many of the big public schools such as Texas, Michigan, Illinois and a few others. But I suspect that if any of these schools dared to do something like trash the football team, their alumni would be up in arms. I doubt the university wants to kill off one of their main sources of donations.

Though personally, I never really cared about football, so trashing it will make no difference to me.

[Alyrium Denryle]

There are costs other than monetary. Schools with a football culture attract people who really should not be in university in the first place. The school faces two choices then. They can flunk these people out, which is the better option, or the programs these people enter (read: communications and undergrad psych programs) get dumbed down. This devalues everyone's degree. It is bad for everyone

That could be said of many of the big public schools such as Texas, Michigan, Illinois and a few others. But I suspect that if any of these schools dared to do something like trash the football team, their alumni would be up in arms. I doubt the university wants to kill off one of their main sources of donations.

Though personally, I never really cared about football, so trashing it will make no difference to me.

UT, Arlington has not had a football team (or any other non-intramural athletics) since 1985

And it shows... It is kinda fun watching the undergrad psych students toil in their own blood, sweat, and tears like they should

[General Zod]

I call shenanigans. The highest salary figure I can find for a coach (according to Salary.com's pricing wizard) is in the $100,000 range. Still overpaid, but nowhere close to the amount in the OP. MAYBE I could see this absurd salary figure for a major league coach, but at the university level? I'm dubious.

[The Spartan]

I call shenanigans. The highest salary figure I can find for a coach (according to Salary.com's pricing wizard) is in the $100,000 range. Still overpaid, but nowhere close to the amount in the OP. MAYBE I could see this absurd salary figure for a major league coach, but at the university level? I'm dubious.

You're wrong.

Contracts for college coaches cover more than salaries
By Jodi Upton and Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY
Pick any numbers you like to define college football's premier teams — points scored, yards allowed.
Or the big money earned by their coaches.

The sport's dizzying salaries spiral has come to this, a USA TODAY study finds: The million-dollar coach, once a rarity, is now the norm. Head coaches at the NCAA's top-level schools are making an average of $950,000 this year, not counting benefits, incentives, subsidized housing or any of the perks they routinely receive. At least 42 of the 119 Division I-A coaches are earning $1 million or more this year, up from five in 1999.

Jim Tressel, coach of No. 1-ranked Ohio State, and Mack Brown, who steered Texas to the national championship a year ago, are among the nine coaches making more than $2 million. Iowa's Kirk Ferentz will pocket a guaranteed $4.6 million in an atypical 13-month period ending next June, including $1.8 million in one-time payments. With the incentive bonuses he still can earn, he could push his take to more than $4.7 million. That's the most among the 107 coaches for whom USA TODAY could obtain a contract or other official document showing compensation.

Oklahoma's Bob Stoops is the only coach in that group who has cleared the $3 million-a-year bar in guaranteed pay, although Ferentz likely will join him in 2007.

Coaches' contracts these days offer far more than just the basic salary. In scrutinizing contracts, USA TODAY found all kinds of perks: personal use of private jets, low-interest home loans, land deals, million-dollar annuities, pricey luxury suites at schools' stadiums, use of vacation homes and family travel accounts.

Texas' Brown received a $1.6 million "special payment" for his 53rd birthday in 2004, before his contract was renegotiated.

The perks vary from coach to coach, but at least one car, country club memberships and tickets for varsity sports events are de rigueur.

About 10% of coaches get a cut of ticket revenue; Oregon's Mike Bellotti got $631,000 last season under such a provision.

Incentive bonuses, raises and automatic contract extensions are promised for winning specific games or specific numbers of games, helping guide players to graduation, keeping players out of trouble and completing individual years of contracts.

USA TODAY could not obtain figures for 11 coaches, including Notre Dame's Charlie Weis, who is likely among the higher earners. Notre Dame is a private school that declined the newspaper's request for salary information, and his salary does not appear on the school's most recently available tax records.

Access to compensation information for the coaches in Pennsylvania, including Penn State's Joe Paterno, is being decided as part of a lawsuit that has reached the state's supreme court.

"Is (Ferentz's compensation) fair?" says Gary Barta, who took over as Iowa's athletics director in August, inheriting the high-end contract accorded Ferentz, a two-time Big Ten Conference coach of the year with a 6-5 record this season. "I'm not going to judge that. Is it the reality across the country? Yes. We want to keep Kirk here. The marketplace drives what we pay ... and right now the marketplace is aggressive."

Competition for proven coaches is keen, not only among colleges but increasingly from the National Football League. Its teams have hired four college head coaches in the past five-plus years — Nick Saban from Louisiana State, Dennis Erickson from Oregon State, Steve Spurrier from Florida and Butch Davis from Miami (Fla.) — giving them contracts averaging $2.5 million to $5 million per year. NFL teams also have flirted with Stoops, Brown and Ferentz, among others.

"Just like the high-end housing market can pull up the mid-range housing market," NFL coaching salaries can affect college coaching salaries, says Gary O'Hagan, manager of the sports marketing and representation firm IMG's coaches' division, which represents NFL and college coaches.

The coaching market isn't always so logical, says Peter Likins, the recently retired president of the University of Arizona and head of an NCAA panel on fiscal responsibility. Even presidents and trustees can fall prey to the impulse to overpay for the promised glitter of a winning season.

"These are emotional decisions," Likins says of the hiring process.

Multimedia is driving force

Feeding the salary spiral, insiders and critics say, is a tidal wave of money from schools' lucrative television and apparel contracts — and from the latest skyrocketing revenue sources, multimedia and marketing rights deals for entire athletic programs or entire campuses.

For example, Auburn in April signed a nine-year, $51.3 million multimedia and marketing rights deal with ISP Sports; starting in 2008, Auburn's guaranteed annual rights fee will rise 138% to $5.7 million. While the deal covers all Auburn sports teams, its value is connected largely to fan and advertiser interest in football, says athletics director Jay Jacobs.

Football coach Tommy Tuberville is being paid an average of $1.5 million a year under provisions related to Auburn's deal with ISP Sports — for TV, radio and related personal appearance work — during his seven-year contract, which began in 2005.

"The fact is, today, the majority of (a football head coach's) salary comes from the multimedia rights," Jacobs says.

Above all, schools are driven to maintain or shore up a sport that's the revenue-generating backbone of most overall athletics programs.

At Texas, for example, the return on the sizable investment in Brown is a pre-eminent football program that last season won the school's first football national championship in 35 years and accounted for 62% of all the Longhorns' athletics revenues, turning a $42 million profit. Football essentially underwrote 17 other sports at the school that don't make money — all but men's basketball and baseball.

Not all athletic departments are self-supporting. Between 80% and 95% of Division I-A athletic departments still rely on either the university's general fund or student fees to balance the budget, according to NCAA financial reports obtained by USA TODAY and other academic studies.

When football coaches are the face of the athletic program, however, they are more and more often claiming marquee salaries. Increasingly, they are turning to sports agents to exact what they consider a fair share.

*snip the rest*

[General Zod]

I call shenanigans. The highest salary figure I can find for a coach (according to Salary.com's pricing wizard) is in the $100,000 range. Still overpaid, but nowhere close to the amount in the OP. MAYBE I could see this absurd salary figure for a major league coach, but at the university level? I'm dubious.

You're wrong.
>snip<

Huh. Clearly I'm in the wrong line of work.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I call shenanigans. The highest salary figure I can find for a coach (according to Salary.com's pricing wizard) is in the $100,000 range. Still overpaid, but nowhere close to the amount in the OP. MAYBE I could see this absurd salary figure for a major league coach, but at the university level? I'm dubious.

It's difficult to find an exact figure, but a rough guide to how much UMich had to pay in damages to hire their latest coach is in the order of 4 million.

But... http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/w ... x.html#usc

Old yes, but gives you an idea how much they might be paying now.