America sure love football.
The highest-paid public employee in your state is probably a college football or basketball coach.
ESPN published a report on the highest-paid public employee, which is someone paid by a state, county, or city institution. College athletic coaches dominated the list, often earning many times the salary of the state governor, probably the highest-profile public job.
Eight basketball coaches and 31 football coaches made the list, representing 39 out of 50 states.
Not exactly a ******* secret, that.
That is almost common knowledge at this point, not a new revelation.
And? That’s nothing compared to the direct and indirect revenues they bring to the schools through the athletic departments.
And a lot of these same guys block their unpaid players from transferring to certain schools while ditching their teams before bowls games for better jobs.
But you could make an argument that their pay is justified if you look at how much money they are bringing to their schools.
If you want to see truly overpaid public employees, look at college women’s basketball coaches. Some of them make over a million a year while their programs lose money.
The Governor of Maine is getting ripped off!
I somehow doubt that the head coach is running the sociology program. If he was perhaps it would be as highly ranked as the football program.
You’d have to contact each of the schools to see how those revenues are broken down and distributed.
It would be interesting to know just how much of a financial drain all of the other sports (other than basketball) are on the schools?
That public employee is partly responsible for the millions upon millions of revenue generated for the schools with winning sports records.
Bam…mystery solved. One could almost label it a commission? Now let’s put all public employees on commission and that will have a positive impact on our country. 
Without football, there wouldn’t be any women sports. And that would be a shame.
Yep. You may not have track or wrestling either? Football generates revenue and great football generates millions.
I wonder what female athletes get their degrees in. I personally know one female athlete who used her athletic skills to earn dual degrees in accounting and finance.
Two years later she is doing quite well as a contributing member of society.
Oh and a softball player who is now an elementary school teacher.
I personally knew a very good female athlete who went to college, graduated, came back and started a youth female softball league. She was very passionate and pointed out how females are not given anywhere near the opportunities as boys and asked for financial help. That was 20 years ago. Several years now, a team from with in that league has won the state championship and gone on to the nationals. Her vision has grown into a way of life.
Personally I find the marriage between sports programs and higher education inappropriate and fiscally stupid. Clearly this is one of the reasons for the skyrocketing costs of tuition. Here is an excerpt from the article you sited:
"Texas Tech generated $19.1 million profit in football, compared with a $14.4 million loss for the other teams.
Those big profits in football also pay for administrative salaries, and protect the universities from having to chip in institutional transfers to support the less popular sports. But the situation raises the question: If football is by far the sport that people on campus care about the most, why not simply focus on that and tone back the expenses for the other teams?
Athletics officials gave two reasons. One, gender equity rules require that comparable opportunities be available for men’s and women’s athletes. Colleges would violate federal law if they only devoted resources to football and men’s basketball."
As someone who has been in public education there are kids who get scholarships for things like fencing. What logical reason is there for colleges to fund sports programs that do not generate money for the school? The money generated from sports should be used to reduce tuition costs for ALL students. There is so much fiscal idiocy with higher education it can make ones head spin.
I have no problem with this.
Also, if you click through the OPs link to the actual ESPN report, it states that schools get lots of outside groups kicking in $$$, as from booster clubs, so it’s not all taxpayer money covering these salaries.
trolling
I deleted the exchange. It was back and forth of a personal nature not a political debate.
