Jim Harbaugh.
Forget about those friggin’ satellite camps. It’s stuff like this that really gets the Greg McGaritys of the college football world’s panties in a wad:
Michigan’s assistants will set a new standard for college football coach salaries, with three — offensive coordinator Tim Drevno, defensive coordinator Don Brown and passing game coordinator and assistant head coach Pep Hamilton — making $1 million for the next three seasons.
LSU and Alabama both had two assistants at or above $1 million last season. No public school has had three at a time, according to USA Today research.
That’s not even the worst of it. Drevno and Brown have five-year deals and Hamilton has a four-year contract.
The startled reaction many people had to that Monte Kiffin million-dollar-a-year deal back in the halcyon days of 2009 seems so quaint now. Hell, 2014 seems long ago, for that matter. Unless you’re McGarity having to defend the reserve fund against the next salary onslaught.
Damn that Harbaugh.
Get The Picture 
The bubble is going to burst sooner than later…
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The money is taking this sport down a bad road. It’s one thing to let the market dictate salaries, TV contracts, licensewear etc….but when you also ask fans to also pony up more for tickets (and donations) and cable TV fees and continue to lengthen games, just to pay these salaries and for bigger/better facilities ……you will see attendance and ratings being to erode….
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IMO, this is what the folks who complain about player compensation and not understanding why student-athletes aren’t satisfied in that regard aren’t getting.
In less than a decade, we’ve gone from one assistant coach in all of CFB making $1 million a year to three on the same staff making more than that. That’s not a reflection of coaching talent. It’s a reflection of how awash the sport is in money.
It’s a different world, and that’s just since 2009.
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Agreed but paying the players more than what they already receive in education, stipends, food and “other benefits” isn’t the solution.
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I think paying the players their market value is a better solution for them than waterfalls in the locker room and a miniature golf course in the athletic building. I’m not a huge fan of it, but the hypocrisy in college sports (football and men’s basketball) has pushed me to it.
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I don’t disagree with that but who determines their “market value”? Georgia makes the same amount of revenue, whether Todd Gurley is there or Nick Chubb or Alec Ogletree or AJ Green or Matthew Stafford. And believe me, they are getting a ton of benefits, these stories about kids not being able to get a pizza on the weekend or travel home to see a sick parent are a joke.The stipend was a good step and it could be increased but market value won’t work.
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The Red Elephant Club isn’t going away (nor are the other SEC’s schools version of this) even if you pay players.
Players are already getting paid.
Anytime someone says he is a “Great recruiter” that = bag man is coming…
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How do you resolve Title IX requirement that female athletes get the same benefits as male? When you pay football players their “market value,” presumably some fraction of revenue derived from football, when the Ladies equestrian team complains, they will have to be paid the same.
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Because it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a red herring argument produced by those that don’t want to pay athletes.
While Title IX requires offering equal opportunities, that doesn’t mean equal dollar amounts. Otherwise – schools would be required to have the same operating expenses for every sport and women’s lacrosse coaches would get paid the same as football coaches.
Again – I can’t understand why you guys keep over-complicating this. Every other industry in the rest of the world (including college football for everybody but the players) has figured out how to pay employees market value. The market will bear what it will bear and we’ll go from there. Some schools will be able to pay more than others just like Fortune 500 companies can pay more to attract talent than start-ups. The schools that can afford to pay the most are already getting all the to recruits anyways so it’s not like there’s going to be some seismic shift in the fairness of college football. The schools that can’t afford to pay players as much will still be picking up the guys that aren’t top recruits that could still use that college scholarship, just like the start-ups that have to provide more creative avenues of compensation to attract talent. I assure you that the change you will see is reigned-in coaching / admin salaries and less waterfalls and putt putt courses in upstate South Carolina.
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Forgot to link to the Forbes article in my comment:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2014/02/04/when-it-comes-to-paying-college-athletes-is-title-ix-more-of-a-red-herring-than-a-pink-elephant/#3fc52b1a63fd
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The case cited in the article linked above involved a preliminary injunction application in an employment discrimination case and barely addressed title IX. It looked an the difference in pay between the male and female coach and not from the perspective of athletic opportunities for male vs. female athletes.
Other cases hold that failing to provide batting cages and lighted fields for girls softball team where boys baseball team had them was a violation. I expect that the argument would be that poor female students who only get current scholarship benefits, if compared to male football players making $30 K a year plus scholarship is not an equal athletic opportunity. Female plaintiff says she has to work on the side instead of participating in sports due to financial strain, etc… Similarly situated male student is being paid and hardship is erased. Where many male teams have been eliminated to accomplish proportionality of participation between the sexes, I suspect equal pay(benefits) will also be required. Good link and interesting issue. Thank you.
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Same thing with our jobs, isn’t it? If we didn’t do our jobs someone else would and the company would still be in business. But when we’re the ones doing it, we expect to be paid.
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The sport is awash in money right now. I decided in 2001 that I would no longer pay money to UGA for the privilege of being inconvenienced on game day. The older alumni and fans like me are giving up on the in-person fan experience. What should be more troubling to athletic directors around the country is that increasing numbers of students are opting out of attending football games.
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I fear Michigan is headed down a bad path (I say fear because my SO is from Ann Arbor and thus I have become more invested in the Wolverines). The UM people are blindly in love with Harbaugh and so far that has been fine. But given his track record (and losing so many starters off this year’s team) I see a dip in performance and then him rubbing people the wrong way. UM will then be stuck paying off multiple multi-year million $ assistant coaching salaries. Regardless of how awash the sport is with money, paying a buch of it to people who are no longer in your employ has an impact.
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The problem with college football administration is that there are no longer any “long-term” employees. The days of Joel Eaves and Vince Dooley are long gone. ADs and coaches are hired on a short-term basis, and make financial demands/decisions on a short-term basis. NOBODY is looking 10-25 years down the road to determine if the short-term decision make any sense.
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Harbaugh is getting pretty much what he wants in return for the what UM really wants…prominence in college football and getting Ohio State under control…’Hail to the Victors’ doesn’t play well if you’re under achieving…
He and the UM machine are all in and at a steep angle…I don’t envy his expectations…I’m reminded of the old Chinese proverb ‘he who rides a tiger must never fall off’.
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When is the bubble going to burst and it will? Then the gnashing of teeth by AD’s will be mind numbing.
Regarding Harbaugh, he has tanked everywhere he has coached. UM will be the same. Eventually he will blow up and will have to go.
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Me precious…..me precious…..
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