A coach is probably the highest-paid public employee in your (US) state | Hacker News Reader

A coach is probably the highest-paid public employee in your (US) state

wagesofwins.com

27 pointssoundsop52 comments

An employee with specialized skills who runs a profit center in an organization makes the most money? Color me surprised.

Profit centers, eh? http://seattletimes.com/html/collegesports/2010103078_ncaa21...

From your link:

Of the 119 FBS football teams, 68 (57.1 percent) finished the year in the black.

Of the 119 FBS schools playing men's basketball, 67 teams made a profit. One of those same 119 schools made money in women's basketball in 2008.

FBS football teams recorded a median net profit of $1.95 million. Men's basketball at the same schools produced a median profit of $518,000. No other sport at the FBS schools, measured by median values, showed a program in the black.

so yeah, profit centers.

The facility cost is shifted to university's balance sheet. Most calculations assume that the cost of building and maintaining a stadium and supporting infrastructure is zero.

I'm going to sound like an economist that refuses to pick up a $20 bill (if it's real, somebody else would've picked it up), but there's, for example, profit opportunity in on-campus food catering. So a bunch of private contractors sign up with university to operate their own facility, hire their own staff, and give the university a cut of the earnings or licensing fee.

Why has no for-profit corporation stepped up to build up a stadium, hire coaches and players, license the university name and then enjoy the profits?

An athletic program in isolation may not be profitable, but I think most schools view it as an important way to keep alumni involved and believe the increase in alumni donations more than offsets any loss they may take in athletics.

The facility cost is shifted to university's balance sheet. Most calculations assume that the cost of building and maintaining a stadium and supporting infrastructure is zero.

Do you have a source on that? I couldn't figure out a way to research it myself, but it seems illogical that the cost of financing the facilities would not hit he P&L of the athletics association.

Why has no for-profit corporation stepped up to build up a stadium, hire coaches and players, license the university name and then enjoy the profits?

The same reason many Universities still own on campus housing in most cases. Likely because Universities will not let them. Also, it is likely that the NCAA would oppose it.

Good point. A lot of people assume that college sports programs always generate income for the school, but many of them lose money (though probably not the ones employing these particular coaches). I attended a school that was in the process of adding a football program, and the first effect of that was an extra fee for students (in addition to an existing athletics fee). I think the only way that college sports can be acceptable is if they never take money from other programs or increase the cost of education for students not participating in those sports.

Yes, profit centers. Notice how all but one of the coaches on that map coach Football or Basketball.

Athletic departments as a whole aren't profitable because the ridiculous amounts of profits earned by basketball and football can't subsidize the losses incurred by supporting the other sports.

Does this profit calculation include or exclude the cost (or bond interest payments) of building up a football stadium with supporting facilities?

Obviously that's going to be an analysis that has to be done for every stadium. Certainly in many cases it works out -- the average age of an NCAA stadium or arena is much higher than a professional venue. These are not the billion-dollar megaplexes you're probably imagining.

But really, I think the issue here is that you're arguing at cross purposes. There's a strong argument to be made that the whole idea of the state running a profit-making sports team through its universities is flawed and borderline immoral. And I tend to agree.

But that says nothing about the economics of the situation, or the "fairness" of paying the coaching staff a market wage, or even the fact that these absurd salaries are, in fact, driven by a very liquid and efficient market.

Yeah, agree with what you're saying. The "fairness" comes into play as high-salaried coaches become high-pensioned retirees [1], but other than that NCAA salaries are not wildly divergent from professional sports salaries, so seem to be in line with market

http://budget.universityofcalifornia.edu/files/2011/11/2012-...

Yes, profit centers. While most are losing money, the ones paying their coaches many millions of dollars, generally are not.

I think the obvious question regarding this issue is whether athletics provide any educational value. Is so, why would we care if they turn a profit? How would spending funds on athletics be any different than spending funds on other ancillary departments like drama or music?

It seems that most universities believe there is some value in it for students considering that many schools are happy to run athletic departments at a net loss. The Ivy League for example has a strong tradition of fostering athletic competition and those schools often have larger athletic departments than most large state universities.

Athletic departments also provide a marketing opportunity. Students are often willing to go to a particular school because they like the football team. For better or worse, sports add an additional experience to college.

Is this including increased revenue from alumni? Or rather, how much it would decrease if the sports teams were removed? I'm not sure if this is actually something that would happen, but it seems like it could be.

While it's unclear where removing the sports team would work (one would probably have to look at universities outside of US, which more often don't have large athletic programs), this research found no correlation between team performance and alumni donation volume.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2004/09/surprise-winning...

Yes, most college athletic departments do operate in the red. I think you are forgetting about the professional sports, and the professional coaches.

And yet the specialized employees people really pay to watch make nothing at all.

I can't imagine this lasts much longer -- it's such a charade to begin with that eventually there will have to be a major shift in how college athletics are handled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/lets-start-paying...

I agree that the disparity is a serious problem. However, I reject the notion that the solution is to pay the athletes. The fundamental problem is the intertwining of a business and an academic pursuit; colleges should not be in the business of sports, and the sports they have should be about amateur competition rather than fundraising or prepping athletes for the NBA, or the NFL, etc.

The solution is to divorce academic institutions from the sports business.

The solution is to get rid of ridiculous requirements that certain pro leagues (NFL, NBA) have mandating certain years of college experience.

This deprives no one their ability to make money & also gives student athletes the ability to either get an education or hone their skills.

Most of these high paid coaches and rules violations involve football and basketball anyway...

What will be fascinating is to watch what happens with youth sports once they start paying college athletes. It will no longer be about little Johnny getting a college scholarship to play for Note Dame, it will be about real money. Can't wait to see what the sidelines sound like at your local youth sporting event.

I don't get this line of reasoning. Colleges will never be able to pay what pro teams do. They will never be able to afford to pay every athlete on every team. Certain colleges will always be able to pay more than others. This won't change anything. If anything, it will exacerbate the problem.

The "real" money will always be in the pros. Get the kids to the pros quicker, if they want.

I wouldn't consider full ride scholarships, personal tutors and assistants, as well as what ever kick backs they can get under the table from boosters and alums "nothing at all".

But there's essentially a modest salary cap. Whether you just made the cut for a scholarship or you're in the Heisman race and are responsible for a huge boost in ticket sales, you get ~$70k, which must be redeemed in the form of tuition, college room and board, tutoring, etc. You can try to supplement with under the table money, but it will still be pretty modest (like 10k max?).

On the other hand, coaches get to demand pay that is somewhat linked to the value they provide to the school, and they don't even have to risk career-ending and life-changing injuries (and incur almost certain subtle brain damage) in the process.

Oh, and as is common in our society, the people with the high-paid, safe job are mostly white, and there are many people of color in the exploited job (especially in the sports that make real money). Oh, and they're basically all men.

As we've seen from scandals at universities around the country, players don't actually get much of an education. How could they when they have to devote so much time to proper diet, practice, and then the games themselves?

A coach probably brings more revenue into your school than any other employee.

Typically, it's only into the athletic department, though. At least at the big state schools I've been at, money from athletics/merchandizing/etc goes to athletics and only athletics. Beyond paying for athlete's education, etc, the money isn't going back into education in any direct way.

However, the coach's salary is typically paid out of the athletic revenue stream, not directly from state funds, which makes it a bit of a moot point.

(Note: To the best of my knowledge (which isn't much) this holds for Univ. of TN, Univ. of AL, and Univ. of WI. It's probably different at many other schools.)

Of course, all that having been said, the popular sports entirely fund all of the less popular, but still very meaningful athletic programs. There's also a _lot_ to be said for the secondary effects of having a popular sports team on the overall prestige and income of a university.

I never got the link between sports programs and academic prestige.

It is basically a marketing expense. There are countless reports of applications going up due to a successful sports team. When applications go up, a school can be more selective and choose better students. More selectiveness and better students will lead to a higher academic prestige. Basically anything that makes a school more attractive will eventually help bolster academic prestige.

Eh, I can see it for undergraduate admissions, etc. I'm very skeptical as well.

However, I know some very smart people who did actually choose their undergraduate program based partly on the football team.

I chose my school partly because I followed the basketball team as a kid. It's free marketing. I never heard of half of the small division III schools in my area, but all of the big state schools were on my radar because of sports.

>It's free marketing.

Expensive marketing.

that's a big chunk of everything,

when you buy a pop out of the machine, what fraction of what your paying for is raw material + production cost and what percentage is so the can pay for superbowl ads so the next time you're thirsty their brand is the first the pops into your head?

where you go for undergraduate engineering isn't that big of a deal, right?

In my case I said no to a top 10 engineering undergraduate school offering some scholarship and yes to the University of Alabama which was my grandad/dad's alma mater and thus our football team, an in-state school with cheaper tuition offering a lot of scholarship, and not Auburn University which had a slightly better engineering program rank but were UofA rivals. Had a _great_ uni experience and would make the same choice every time.

Had no trouble getting a job in a large company as a kernel developer straight from uni. Sure maybe doing MIT or Stanford I could have been a HVT for ~Google or I would have been in an impromptu startup by junior year.. but those student ticket prices!!!

Roll Tide. Still fly back a few times per season to go to games.

When the Virginia Tech football team made it big, the average incoming SAT score increased markedly.

A quick look for historical data failed, but if you can find the data, the big shift should have occurred with the class matriculating in 1994±1.

Correlation is not causation, but it's not implausible that notability in athletics can have sympathetic effects for funding and student quality.

If only there were a daily 'Science' section in the newspaper to go alongside 'Sports'....

the accounting that goes into whether a sports program is profitable or not is sort of tricky

scholarships are counted at the full tuition rate

its obvious that the marginal cost of educating 80 some football players isn't 0, but its not obvious that its the full tuition rate

a sizeable chunk of students are offered some sort of financial package to attend a university,

some non zero percentage of football players come from low income situations such that it is unlikely they would be paying full tuition sans the scholarship

also a dispropotionate number of scholarship athletes are from out of state, if they disappear its unlikely that the replacement 80 some students would be paying as much out of state tuition

Good point.

However, alumni donations are often strongly correlated to the performance of the sports teams (at universities with traditions of popular sports teams, anyway). Donations are a non-trivial part of a university's income stream.

Also, a prestigious sports team can definitely boost undergraduate enrollment. It's effective advertising, as several people have pointed out.

From an academic standpoint, I've seen the bad side of popular sports teams (_Heavy_ pressure on professors and TA's to give star players high grades despite a complete lack of attendance.). I personally feel like most (particularly in the southeast US) of the large schools with popular sports teams have absolutely awful undergraduate programs. That's partly just a function of being a large university, though.

There are certainly negatives along with the positives.

And the highest-paid person you graduated high school with is probably a player (assuming you went to a run-of-the-mill public school)

A guy I graduated with plays in the NBA, and makes somewhere around 6 million a year, which is about the league average. He'll probably be retired in a few more years but he'll still have had a good 10-12 years of making an extremely high salary.

I would be surprised if there is a public school to cover every professional athlete. A quick google returns ~27,000 public high schools in the US. Can't imagine there are that many professional athletes.

That's okay, it probably won't last:

Sports Illustrated estimated in 2009 that 78 percent of NFL players are bankrupt or facing serious financial stress within two years of ending their playing careers and that 60 percent of NBA players are broke within five years of retiring from the game.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-04-22/Pro-a...

Very common. A kid who got drafted the same year from the rival high school across town OWES the team that drafted him $10 million.

What about elected state employees? I know in Georgia the top two are tax commissioners. The real issue isn't their salary so much as the pensions and other retirement perks many already highly compensated public employees, elected, appointed, or otherwise, collect, and how soon they can collect. Throw in double dipping and the numbers get high quick

An old thread now, but I thought this article was pretty topical, re: one of the highest-paid coaches in college football:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2013/05/13/the-magic...

Is the data out there find out what the highest paid programmer/database administrator/'IT manager' is per state?

This is really misleading because while state colleges are ostensibly public institutions nowadays most of them (especially ones that pay their coaches a shit ton of money) are not receiving the majority of their funding from public sources.

Hey, my state is the only one where the highest paid employee is specifically for women's sports. He is not a woman himself, though.

Nevada is completely appropriate, though.

I was extra tickled that the highest paid public employee in Nevada (read: Las Vegas) is a plastic surgeon.

And a CEO or Sales guy is probably the highest paid employee of a software company.

But the CEO and the Sales guy are key to the software company's mission. The football coach is not key to either education or research.

That's silly, the coach is key to the athletics department he was hired to work for, just as the CEO and sales guy are key to their respective departments (or in the case of the CEO, the entire company).

So innocent :) CEOs more often then not, are not essential to the company. Sales guy maybe, but plenty of them sell based on company inertia.

Now a coach on the other hand...

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