USA Today looks at the rising salaries of college basketball coaches, which is now percolating down to schools with smaller athletic budgets. It’s a classic case of keeping up with the Joneses, brought on by an expanding tournament which is the gauge for success.
Football is different.
VCU digging deep to thwart the get-Smart bids by Illinois and N.C. State is emblematic of a widening dollar gap between major-conference schools and so-called midmajors. Football TV contracts and attendance for the six power conferences of football’s Bowl Championship Series mean big money, while competitive ambitions at midmajors often outrun their athletics departments’ ability to pay for them.
VCU is paying for Smart’s raise with increased student athletic fees.
Get The Picture 
Raising student fees to pay a coach’s salary? What a shitty thing to do. It’s one thing to keep non-revenue sports afloat, but to tax the students in order to raise a coach’s salary from (hypothetical numbers incoming) $500k to $1.2 million? Outrageous!
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Does this mean Fox has to take a cut in pay?
How many paying patrons/game is needed to pay that 1.2M salary? What does that bring the total BBall take necessary to maintain a team on a football-dependant campus?
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Football is different? Derek Dooley is making $2 million a year to not coach Tennessee in bowl games. Ole Miss is paying a new head coach $1.5 million before he’s even coached a game in the Southeastern Conference with incentives which can push the deal to $2.5 million.
At least raises based on success in the tournament are based on SOMETHING.
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