Now that John Calipari has become the highest paid college basketball coach, and during a terrible economic downturn, talk of the salaries of college coaches is front and center. That’s even more the case now than it was in February, when Jim Calhoun was famously asked about his salary by a political activist who managed to get a photo credential to a game. It was also a topic of discussion with the National Association of Basketball Coaches news conference on Thursday.
This really cuts to the heart of the larger issue of what athletes and coaches make throughout the sports world. In college sports, it is particularly noteworthy because the coaches are at academic institutions, and the primary mission is academic in nature since student-athletes are a minority of the student body. It’s something that often brings out reactions of righteous indignation, as people who object to these salaries often mention that coaches make more than professors, or how pro athletes make more money than doctors or teachers.
There’s a key thing to remember in all of this. The salaries are determined by one big factor: economics. When Calhoun talked about the money the basketball program brings in to the university, he was on the right track, much as his manner in that press conference left something to be desired. The men’s basketball program brings in a large amount of money to the university directly, and indirectly it does that as well. Additionally, boosters also help pay the salaries of coaches, as well as media and conference revenue sharing, the last of which is derived in part from wins by conference schools in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies are on national television all the time.
For Calipari, only a small part of his compensation at Kentucky – $400,000 – will be his base salary. Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart was quick to note that “the bulk of this compensation is derived from our multi media rights contract that includes radio and television agreements, other sponsors and conference revenue sharing.” In fact, he repeated this shortly thereafter.
It’s also worth noting that there are only about 340 Division I men’s basketball head coaches in a country with over 300 million people. Competition for these jobs is beyond fierce. There are far fewer elite coaches, coaches worth making the top dollar among their peers. Outside of NCAA Division I, there are many more head coaches, and even in Division I the vast majority of coaches make less than $1 million annually.
“The vast majority of college coaches across the United States do not make that kind of money, and we’re in this as educators and for our love of the game, the values that the game has imparted to us and we can pass along to the young men that we coach,” said NABC vice president Larry Gibson, who is the head coach at Division II Northeastern State in Oklahoma.
It’s not as if schools are forgetting their ways or deciding that athletics are more important than education. As much as the University of Kentucky considers their basketball program sacred, the administration didn’t suddenly decide that a coach is simply the most valuable person there, period. The athletic department is not using any state appropriation or university funding to pay its coaches, including Calipari. The simple fact of it is, John Calipari will fill the seats at Rupp Arena and have the team on national television often. In theory, he will have them making deep runs in the NCAA Tournament, which also adds to the school’s coffers. And, it will come quickly.
“If you’re going to get paid those kind of dollars, the expectation is going to be that you’re there’s a level of performance we expect because we’re paying you these kind of dollars,” said NABC executive director Jim Haney. “It’s not like John in his situation can go in and say, Well, I think we’ll get there in seven years. He’s got some realities he’s going to have to deal with, just as every coach does.”
The other thing to remember is that athletics often help a school improve in many other ways. Connecticut is a good example. Besides the money that the program brings in, ever since the program became a national power in men’s basketball in the late 1980s, the school’s academic reputation has also improved steadily.
A better example is a school that knocked off Connecticut to cap its historic Final Four run just a few years ago. How many people had even heard of George Mason University before March of 2006? After that happened, over 300 more freshmen enrolled at the school the next fall. Last year, Robert Baker, director of the Center for Sport Management at the school, released a study on the impact of it. The effects include admissions inquiries increasing by 350 percent since 2006, out of state applications increasing and students from out of state making up a larger percentage of the incoming class, and total freshman applications increasing 22 percent from 2005-06.
The bottom line of it all is simple. As long as fans are buying tickets, buying memorabilia, watching games on television and listening on radio, the salaries of players and coaches will be justified. They might not be justified in a relative sense – think of the lowest-paid coach in a conference who constantly wins while the highest-paid coach sometimes struggles to finish in the top half – but economics is the reason these salaries happen and are not morally wrong. They don’t happen because anyone has a false sense of priorities.
The reality is that people don’t willingly pay hundreds of dollars to see a teacher go to work the way they pay that kind of money to take a friend or family of four out to a baseball game. That’s why teachers don’t make millions of dollars. No one is holding a gun to anyone’s head forcing them to buy a ticket, a team t-shirt or watch the game on television. In light of that, perhaps the righteous indignation that some who don’t like the salaries and quickly mentioned doctors and teachers should be directed at fans.
