On the surface, the only thing more absurd than a public university paying its football coach millions of dollars a year is a public university paying its football coach $11 million to go away.
University of Wisconsin officials are preparing to write that eight-figure check to ousted coach Paul Chryst. In announcing the deal, the Badgers took pains to point out that $11 million is much less than the $20 million remaining on Chryst’s contract, and the money will come not from taxpayers but from private funds.
So, presumably, Wisconsinites from Kenosha north to Superior can rest easy knowing the brass drove a hard bargain and tapped into a handy slush fund.
If this scenario strikes you as anything other than business as usual at a university football powerhouse, think again. Yes, college is for learning and the priority for most students is getting an education. But for Division I football players (along with men’s basketball players) that hasn’t been the case for years.
College football is a multibillion-dollar business, and coaches like Chryst are among its many beneficiaries. As of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic threw off the figures, college football generated an estimated $2.9 billion yearly from the 65 university programs in the five highest-earning conferences. The megabucks subsidize other sports, pay for athletes’ scholarships, help support academic programs and line more than a few pockets at universities around the country.
Much of the money comes from TV revenues, and those giant broadcasting contracts top the list of reasons why the Big Ten, which for decades featured Wisconsin and nine other Midwest teams, will continue its expansion over the next couple of years to at least 16 teams, from coast to coast. The recent deal to add Southern Cal and UCLA brought the conference into the valuable Los Angeles media market. They can hear the cash registers ring all the way in Madison.
It’s no wonder the educators who supposedly run these schools are in thrall of the football programs. Nothing impresses donors and gussies up reputations like a winning team.
From an economic standpoint, the chancellor or president is just not as important as a head coach who delivers the wins. High-performing coach Dabo Swinney of Clemson reportedly makes $10 million-plus a year, or roughly 10 times more than his school’s president. Nick Saban of Alabama, Kirby Smart of Georgia and Lincoln Riley of USC also reportedly make more than $10 million a year.
The travesty at big-time football schools isn’t so much that coaches make a fortune. Their pay is competitive, after all, and if their performance lags, they get the ax — unlike most tenured faculty, for instance.
The real scandal is how student-athletes make enormous sacrifices to generate those billions, risking career-ending injuries while earning peanuts for themselves. Over the past decade, the NCAA, college football’s regulator, has loosened some of its more arbitrary rules. Still, the athletes are getting shortchanged.
As of 2015, college football players and other student-athletes became eligible to receive several thousand dollars in expense money, in addition to the tuition, room and board they receive via scholarships. In 2021, student-athletes were permitted to license their names, images and likenesses, a concession to budding superstars destined for the NFL and NBA who can now cash in on the jerseys, video games and other merch that features them.
Contrary to the warnings from some old-school pessimists, the culture of college sports hasn’t suddenly gone to pot. The fans, commercial sponsors and donors don’t seem to mind that student-athletes can make a little money on the side.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by limiting noncash, educational benefits for athletes. The unanimous ruling concluded that “relaxing these restrictions would not blur the distinction between college and professional sports,” and it gave regulators leeway to define an education-related benefit. So, for now, they can still forbid non-education benefits such as compensating athletes for on-field performance or paying them to attend a school.
While the court acknowledged that amateur athleticism is part of the nation’s tradition and confers valuable social benefits, it left open whether remaining restrictions on college athletes will pass legal muster. We believe the system can be fixed without spoiling the game day experience of rooting for the Badgers, Illini or Wildcats, but increasingly it appears that federal judges will need to join the referees in throwing penalty flags.
While the Supreme Court awaits the next antitrust lawsuit, here’s an idea this page recommended last year, an idea that remains valid today.
The NCAA should finally see the writing on the wall and pay athletes who endure the arduous grind of practices, strength training, games and tournaments, and yield colossal profits for the NCAA and the people at the top rungs of universities. It’s time to end the NCAA’s exploitation of student-athletes. They deserve their fair share.
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