Comment by sb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sb | Hacker News Reader

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That's just appalling. In Europe, AFAIK there is usually no such thing as college/university sports--competition-wise, that is (aside of the known the Oxford/Cambridge rowing competition.)

I just recently discovered the following site, which just makes me sad: http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/?name=papadimitriou

Why are UC-Berkeley and UCLA head coaches earning more than 8 times as much as Christos Papadimitriou? Granted his salary is stellar by comparison, but there are a couple of other well-known UC professors who earn much less. (Richard Karp [of Rabin-Karp fame and Turing-Award winner] gets 166k [14 times less than the UC-Berkeley head-coach].) In addition, the professors from the med-schools seem to do a lot better; even though they are quite out of proportion, at least they're saving lives.

Previously, I supposed these were profitable investments, but when one head coach salaries buys you 14 Dick Karps or 8 Christos Papadimitrious, I really think it doesn't make any sense at all...

In Europe, they do do it differently. Players turn professional at 16-18 depending on the sport and then ride the bench until their mid-20s unless they are truly prodigies. Pro teams are responsible for developing talent and have feeder clubs that field toddlers; they also support B/C/D/E-level leagues which play on town/village level.

What's happening in the US is that the educational system is subsidizing player development and regional promotion for the big pro leagues--which are such a big business it's not even funny.

"The High School Football Team" is an incredibly common movie and TV stereotype, that has no equivalent whatsoever over here, and until recently I never really thought about how completely different the situations are.

How did this happen? Why did junior sports become attached to high schools and colleges in the US when there's nothing like it in Europe?

In scotland rugby developed this way, so that now the "FP" (i.e. school) teams feature promininently in the top two tiers: GHA, Boroughmuir, Watsonians, Heriots, Dundee High, Edinburgh Academicals, Aberdeen Grammar, Stewart's Melville are all such teams.

School\Uni rugby (universities compete in a separate competition) is the closest equivalent we have, though it's utterly unable to compete in terms of attendance and money :)

> Why are UC-Berkeley and UCLA head coaches earning more than 8 times as much as Christos Papadimitriou?

Because there are donors willing to pay the salaries of those coaches and there aren't donors willing to pay Papadimitriou more money. And, you can actually take money from big-money athletics and pay for acadmics.

You can argue that this shouldn't be all you like, but it is. The money that goes to those coaches can't be spent on CS. If anything, it actually provides more money for CS.

I've listened to John Hennessey, Stanford's president, walk through all this. He thinks that Stanford's athletic program makes money for its academic program.

If you think that he's wrong, please provide details so I can ask him. (And it better be something that isn't currently in this thread, as he went through the equivalent and more.)

In the UK there's the British Universities competition (used to be BUSA in my day, now it's BUCS - http://www.bucs.org.uk).

It can in no way compete with US college football in terms of attendance or revenue. However there is no revenue to speak of, teams are funded by each Uni's sports union and by the players themselves. And all the money goes towards paying for facilities, transportation and maybe new strips every other year.

All the same it exists, it's well organised and has many thousands of participants in lots of sports each wednesday afternoon.

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