An interesting read this morning over the tea and toast from the Chronicle of Higher Education that looks at the astronomical figures that make up the salary line of Div. 1 colleges and universities. Well, not the entire salary picture – my own personal experience has been that most public employees aren’t getting even proportionally outsized salaries. No, those astronomical numbers occur consistently in one department across our nation’s campuses: the athletic department.

Joy Blanchard, an associate professor of higher education at Louisiana State University, calculated the difference between her salary and that of her university’s head football coach at the time, Edward Orgeron … Blanchard wanted to know how long it would take him, at his salary, to earn her salary. The answer? Just 2.6 days.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/colleges-are-paying-big-bucks-for-coaches-heres-what-else-they-couldve-spent-the-money-on

Yes, the story does explain the different pools of money that fund athletics versus the rest of the academic enterprise; it discusses the role of donors to lessen the demand of general funds or tuition revenues to make our sports coaches the highest paid public employees in every state. I get all that.

But I’ve been in higher ed for more than three decades and the reality is that the number of athletics programs that are truly fiscally independent, that don’t exert a downward drag on campus finances is a mere handful.

More often than not, athletics budgets magically show up as “balanced” only because the rest of their host campus foots the bill for additional costs, be they infrastructure (building maintenance, parking structures, silly things like internet, phones, and employer costs for employee health care, workers comp, etc.) or just direct subsidies for academic assistance (often in gated facilities available only to athletic elites, not the general student population who may need them, too…). all the way up to direct repayment of debts incurred because, in many – most – cases the athletics enterprise operates in the red and ultimately the institution is the co-signer on the loan and must make good.

I don’t hate athletics, and have been known to root, root, root for the home teams from time to time, but I find it terribly unsettling where the coach salary arms race has taken us – all of use – in recent years. The numbers we spend in one place versus another say a lot more about our priorities than any W/L columns or championship banners can ever replace.

Arms race, Eric?

Sure. Why not? Kinda reminds me of a bumper sticker…