Discussion On College Coach’s Pay
For a few years now, there has been a big debate on if college coaches are getting paid too much. This has been a big argument, and it has been back and forth between college players should get paid, and college coaches shouldn’t get paid as much as they do. With college sports popularity on a steady increase, the coach’s pay has been on the topic list more and more. College coaching salaries are on a continuous rise, and college coaches are worth and deserving of their pay through coaching success and impact on their school. The more wins and progress a coach can give their team and school, the better they will get paid. As for most things in life, if someone is successful in their tasks, they usually get rewarded. In other words, if what the coach does brings in more money than what the school pays them, they are a good value for the university.
A lot of schools are very dependent on their athletic programs for their fundraising and money that they raise from the sporting events. At many schools, the revenue from football and basketball is enough to support the entire athletic department. Intercollegiate sporting events generated an estimated $2 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profit in 2010, and it continued to raise even higher. In 2015 the 231 intercollegiate NCAA Division I schools with recording data available, generated a total of $9. 15 billion in revenue. Winning college programs thrive in diverse ways including ticket and product sales, alumni donations, school merchandise, and TV contracts. All these ways a school can increase their money, is all helped made possible by a successful coach with a winning team.
The school relies heavily on their coach to be able to bring in this amount of money every season, just as they count on to lead their team to success. At least, that’s what the school hopes for. The coach is the back bone of their teams, the school’s “money makers”. A coach is a vital part to more than just the school’s money. College coaches also contribute to their schools by impacting the number of students that want to attend their school when the school’s team is successful, so keeping the school in high attendance is a good reason the coach is worth their pay. School popularity is very important when it comes to bringing in money and students. When a coach takes their teams to success, it puts their school on the map.
One must consider the number of students who are quicker to apply and come to a university because of a successful football (or to a lesser extent, basketball) program. In a study performed by Douglas J. Chung, when a college goes from good to great on the football field or basketball court, undergraduate applications increase dramatically, and this is called the “Flutie affect”. This “Flutie affect” trend started back in 1984 when Boston college took on the University of Miami for the championship football game. After the tremendous successful Boston college “hail Mary” play call from the coach won the game and put them on the map, in two years, the college’s incoming applications had risen 30 percent. A dean at a law school claimed the quality of student applicants and quantity of his student applications rose by 25 percent after his university won the national championship in football. The Flutie affect has also made its impact on many other schools such as Georgetown University with 45 percent increase, and Stanford University with 21 percent increase of students and applicants. When schools get this much increase in applicants, tuition is lowered. This makes more room to increase the pay of the faculty because they have to teach more students, and the coaches are usually the first ones to get a raise because they caused this affect. Increasing the attendance on the school looks good in many ways, and a coach being a reason for that just makes the coach look more useful. So, there is no doubt that the coach well deserves his/her pay when they boost the school’s attendance because of their success.
A successful coach can be thought of as an investment made for the school they coach for and make a big impact on their school with this strategy. The head of a college looks at their head coaches as almost the face of the school, typically because they are all over the TV and the coach is a big investment and can make or break a school’s finances. One of the big topics on this is that college coaches don’t deserve getting paid as much as they do and should not make more than the presidents and CEO’s of the school. With this, the coaches are hired by the presidents and CEO’s themselves and are aware that the coaches will be making the amount they deserve, considering how they are the key to the school’s profits. One perfect example of this is Alabama head coach, Nick Saban. Coach Saban was an already successful coach coming from LSU and was looked at as a major investment to the school, and he was just that. Immediately, Saban had a financial impact on Alabama. In 2007 the school was closing a $50 million capital campaign for its athletic department. After Mr. Saban arrived, the campaign exceeded its goal by $52 million. Alabama’s athletic department revenue the year before Coach Saban showed up was $68 million. By 2013-14 it had risen to $153 million, a gain of 125%. (The athletic department sent $9 million of that to the university. ) Coach Saban’s football program accounted for $95 million of that figure and posted a profit of $53 million. When the team wins and is successful, they get most of their earnings. Granted that coach Saban is the number 1 coach in the nation, most coaches have this affect on their colleges, especially if their team is a success.
A successful coach making big amounts of profit is definitely the biggest impact a coach has on their school. A college coach’s salary rarely depreciates when they transfer schools because of the impact the coach had left with their previous team. Coach’s always have an impact on their school regardless how bad of a season they have. A coach can always bring in money and can always make their high salary. Just like in the previous paragraph, when Alabama hired coach Saban, the board already knew he was a successful coach at his previous school. A school will not want to hire a coach that will not bring them success, so, they will not go below what the school already has. A coach will also not want a pay deduction. Hiring a current head coach from another athletic program can also mean that in addition to the hiring coach’s contract buyout, the hiring school often pays a higher salary to the incoming coach because the school wants them, and the coach will not want to make less than what they made before. If an institution hires a head coach from another institution, contracts may require that the hiring institution pay all or a portion of the remaining contract to the coach’s current institution. The costs of the contract can mount up fast when the hiring school also needs to buy out the remainder of the contracts of the staff that is being replaced. For example, Auburn University was faced with paying out $11 million in contractually obligated buyouts when it dismissed its entire coaching staff. A coach’s impact is a large determining factor on how much they get paid. They leave their mark and their trail going from school to school, and their impact they left stays with them. A school will only want to go up in success, and a coach will always want a higher pay salary. A good coach is deserving of what they make when they leave the impact they made at their old school. Because of a college coach rarely going under what they already make, this is part of the reason a coach’s pay is on a continuous rise.
Although college coaches have many different deserving ways to get the salary they make, many people think they get paid too much. One thing that is typically forgotten and not mentioned. is that other than the facilities used and played in, travel costs and coaches’ salaries, there aren’t many other places to spend the money. The players don’t get paid, but the money has to go somewhere. So, the coaches get the majority of the share. Economists call this rent-seeking behavior, and this is what’s considered unfair, and why the coaches do not deserve this money. One of the top 5 highest paid college coaches, Ohio State University’s football coach, Urban Meyer, recently said that “collegiate coaches are overpaid”. Many say he’s right, but not because his job consists of just playing a game. If that were true, athletes and coaches in the NFL would also be overpaid, but their salaries are largely determined by the demand for their product (the latest Super Bowl was the most watched broadcast in U. S. television history). A professional coach’s salary is capped out due to his/her players are also getting paid under the same manager.
The reason college coaches are said to be overpaid is because the salaries of their employees (the players), aren’t determined by market forces and production. Instead the players just receive scholarships. The salaries that would be paid to the players is instead paid to the coach. Additionally, there has been many surveys done on college coaching pay, and if they should get paid the amount they do. The two biggest reasons why people say coaches shouldn’t get as much is because college players deserve pay, and it is almost unrealistic for the coach to get paid as much, if not more than the school’s president and CEO’s. In fact, 63 percent of respondents from a new survey conducted by Finn Partners, a communications firm, feel that coaches should not make more than the college CEO’s and university presidents. Of those who entered the survey, more than 1 in 3, or 38 percent, strongly hold this view, saying they are "definitely" against higher salaries for coaches. Because sports have become so popular throughout the years, the younger generations seem to favor the sporting events more. Notably, younger respondents, especially those 18-29 years old, were less opposed to the pay gap between coaches and college presidents. This is because this age group are more actively interested in the collegiate sports. Overall, nearly 40 percent of respondents aged 18-44 were more likely to say coaches should make more than college and university presidents compared to 17 percent of those 45 and above. It is very typical for a college coach to make more than the head of the college. This has become a regular occurrence. Coaches who were in the reigns of the five highest-paid employees at their university in 2014 earned an average of $554, 996 more than the university's chief executive, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education's most recent survey on executive compensation at public universities. There are differences in the school on how much the coach agrees to accept from the school profit, and it is all determined on the person hiring them and what the contract consists of. It is obvious that college coaches make a lot, but they are still deserving of what they do regardless of who they get paid more than.
It is no doubt that college coaches are well deserving and worth their pay due to the success they have, and the coach’s impact made on the school. If younger generations continue to be entertained by today’s sports, then the popularity of college sports will still be on a rise, as well as a coach’s pay due to popular demand. Although there are a few disagreements on why coaches get paid what they do, the reasons a college coach’s salary is so high out weigh why they don’t deserve their good pay.
