What about football coaches? Div I football programs are big business, bringing in tens of millions of dollars a year:

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

Most of the these football programs finance all sports for these large universities.

College coaches are paid well because the programs they lead tend to be profit centers for the school.

This is a big misconception. In reality, only a small percentage of football programs are profitable [0]. Even from your link, you can see that many of the programs break even or lose money.

0. http://www.ethosreview.org/intellectual-spaces/is-college-fo...

The sports finance landscape changes too dramatically for you to link 3 or 4 year old articles as present-day fact. Even GPs link is two years old and there have been big revenue jumps since then. I wish we had clearer numbers for college football programs alone for present day revenue numbers with current TV deals. Is there a recent link with just football program revenue vs expenditures? I can't find one.

To be fair, the programs that are more profitable also have more money pumped into them, and those that are less profitable have less money put into them. So yes, many of them are unprofitable, but it also seems like the less profitable ones have much smaller costs. Of course, the school's budgets at those schools might be smaller too, but...

They profit off the labor of unpaid student athletes.

You make a very good point, but these students also generally get scholarships to college, which is not an insignificant form of compensation at all - especially given how much having a college degree matters for future lifetime earnings.

The graduation rate for those athletes tends to be quite low overall though, so not all of them get that benefit.

That's their own fault. If you're given a free/mostly free ride you should take advantage of it.

It's not free if they're working for it. And that work may impede said studies: http://uk.businessinsider.com/college-student-athletes-spend...

plus the concussions.

What figures do you have? How do you count those who leave early to compete professionally?

256 players get drafted every year. There are 124 DI football teams with a max of 85 scholarships per year. If every player made it to their senior year, and the draft only took seniors, and every class was the same size, a player would have < 10% chance of getting drafted. That's a lot of "ifs" just make it to the pro level, and that does NOT get you paid!

That says nothing of the odds of actually making a roster in year one, and says even less of sticking around the league long enough for those big paydays to set you up after retirement.

Basically, if you're playing the odds, the expected value of a college football scholarship isn't bolstered much by the professional payday. Nearly all the value is in that college degree (paid for by scholarship). So graduating with a degree that you can turn into a career is the best play BY FAR.

That takes us to graduation rates. These seem to be fudged a bit since, well, it's in the programs' interests to hide poor performance. You can do your own digging. Lots of articles about this, and it's not terribly great. The NCAA has their bookeeping, the football programs have theirs, and most expert agree that neither counts accurately. Best case, graduation rates are in line with general student graduation rates. Worst case, not even close.

Lower than students of similar economic backgrounds who spend a similar number of hours working after you correct for field of study?

But the parent point was that the coaches/programs paid for themselves, but if you have to figure in 100 scholarships at $10-50k/yr that's $10-50M ignoring the cost of the stadium. I don't see most (>50%) Div1 teams making back that kind of money from their Alumni.

The best argument I can see is that this is an outreach program for minority and under-privileged youth. The problem with that is the brain-damage that football causes.

Not when these athletes are tied to their performance and can lose their scholarships, also not when they are forced to study easy classes to keep playing instead of studying.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/opinion/nocera-football-an...

Separate (and valid) issue from the core issue the parent pointed out.

College football programs are often very big profit centers. They typically pay for the other sports programs as well. That's why football coaches are paid the way they are.

College players should obviously be compensated in some manner as well. All that will do is reduce the profitability (or increase ticket prices a lot higher to offset, which may not be possible); it's unlikely to eliminate the business being quite profitable given the scale & ticket prices.

Compensation is a vector.

I've always thought that the "profit center"/"cost center" distinction doesn't make a lot of sense.

The instant example is a pretty good illustration---a crappy university president can do a lot more damage to a university than a crappy football coach (e.g. by making decisions that cause the failure of big chunks of the institution and massive financial losses), so judging the impact of hiring a better president vs a better football coach by whether they're responsible primarily for things with a plus sign or a minus sign on them in the accounting books seems... pointless?

(Plus, since the president is the football coach's boss, why would we account football revenue to the coach and not the president?)

realistically, they are profit centers for the football programs. Little if any of that money makes it back to the school.

For their math to work you have to assume that NONE of the donors who donate to sports would donate to anything else...I find that to be a fairly unlikely assumption.

> Little if any of that money makes it back to the school.

That's incorrect. Most major football programs transfer a large percentage of their revenue above operating expenses, back to the university. Texas for example, which is typically one of the top five college football businesses (and nearly a pro level business), transfers about half of its revenue after expenses (ie profit) back to the university.

The top teams do a whole lot better than smaller schools though. For considering policy the aggregate is more interesting than the schools with the best numbers.

Look at the spending that the schools other than UM and MSU put towards athletics:

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/08/michigan_college...

It's not about donors. Div I schools can make hundreds of millions of dollars from media rights.

... why do presidents have more of a "real job" than football coaches? Having been neither a college administrator nor a football player, I can explain to you exactly what a football coach does and what their work involves and how to evaluate them and how to figure out if they're running a program that's net profitable for the university. I certainly can't tell you what a college president does or how to evaluate them, given how highly abstracted their work is.

Colleges exist in order to educate the populous, per their own mission statements. Take a look at The University of Texas' "Mission and Values" page, note how they don't use the words sports or athletics.

Mission: The mission of The University of Texas at Austin is to achieve excellence in the interrelated areas of undergraduate education, graduate education, research and public service. The university provides superior and comprehensive educational opportunities at the baccalaureate through doctoral and special professional educational levels.

The university contributes to the advancement of society through research, creative activity, scholarly inquiry and the development and dissemination of new knowledge, including the commercialization of University discoveries. The university preserves and promotes the arts, benefits the state’s economy, serves the citizens through public programs and provides other public service.

https://www.utexas.edu/about/mission-and-values

They're responsible for the success or failure of a whole lot of stuff that matters, even though that success or failure is difficult to measure. By contrast, the football coach is responsible for the success or failure of something that is easy to measure, but does not matter at all---at best, and at worst is harmful (at least to the bodies and minds of the players being exploited). That seems like a pretty good standard for "real job" to me.

I think it's important to keep in mind that at these high pay levels, the president is more of a figurehead whose primary role is to fundraise. In light of this, their job does seem similar in that both the president and the coach are there to help the college raise money.

The responsibility you mention is delegated down to the next level.

I'm not convinced that's true---although I'm not sure how much my perception is reliable given that I've never been inside a president's office. That being said, at least the perception within universities is that presidents are often responsible for some very consequential decisions.

The most obvious example is internal budget allocation, which can make or break entire programs.

This article from Bloomberg has lots of good quotes in it, here's one:

"President Hatch's compensation over the course of his tenure reflects his exceptional leadership," trustee chair Donna Boswell said. The school has raised nearly $800 million under Hatch, she said.

Right, no question that fundraising is an important, perhaps the most important, part of the job. I'm just saying that making mission-critical decisions about the whole institution is also in there.

Coach salaries are rising due to competition among schools for winning (or desirable) coaches as well as increasing profit, particularly among the Power-5 football schools. Football programs at big schools make enough profit to fund other sports with some left over: http://www.businessinsider.com/schools-most-revenue-college-...

A WSJ analysis analyzed football programs as if they were sports franchises to be sold on the open market. Ohio State topped the list at a value of $1.5 billion.

The article talks about possible tax revisions to the top endowed schools, but I doubt they will revoke the ability to deduct exorbitant football seat sales from taxes. Yes, big donors to football programs can buy really expensive season tickets and deduct it from their taxes since its related to non-profit schools. That deduction as well as the huge kickbacks from TV (ESPN) to televise games are driving the money grab.

Sports clubs should be separated from schools and universities. I've got no idea why they are bundled together.

Because the university affiliation turns minor league football / basketball into national television and gets people to spend millions of dollars on tickets and merchandise. No one watches the NBA D-league, but they're happy to watch the Tar Heels play. Similarly, no one watches arena ball, but they're happy to fill the stadium and watch Oregon State lose every week.

It also serves as extremely effective advertising for the university. The fact "Bama Bama Bama, Bama Bama Bama Bama, Bama Bama Bama" is a valid sentence on ESPN week in and week out adds up to weeks of coast-to-coast advertising for Alabama, and enrollment statistics reflect.

Roll Tide to that.

But they are advertising the wrong thing. A university is supposed to engage in teaching and research, not sports. They can keep their Street Fighting Math and Integration Bee teams, but football needs to go, it gives the students and the public the wrong idea.

Yea but if the football team brings in lots of $$$ I think it is fine. Now teams that are not making money is a different story

As others have pointed out, Div I football programs bring in a lot of money for colleges.

The real issue is what is the school spending money on that constantly increases tuition?