“Nick Saban (Alabama's football coach) is probably the most underpaid state employee in the US.”

A coach that makes 5 million working with athletes that aren’t paid for risking their health is underpaid?

There's NFL coaches making twice as much as him while producing significantly worse results. And he's certainly bringing in more than $5 million of revenue and free marketing to the university

Then he should go to the NFL and hang with the big guys.

Is he personally bringing in the millions and the athletes nothing?

>Is he personally bringing in the millions and the athletes nothing?

I agree with the first half of your sentence and not the second. But I would argue that Saban is easily 10x more important to Alabama's success than any single athlete on the team. I think Bama's QB carousel backs up that claim.

> Then he should go to the NFL and hang with the big guys.

Financially that might be the best move for him, however I don't agree that everyone's main goal in life should be to maximize income. That said, if someone gave me $3 million to do a job I don't like as much as my current one, I'd jump on the opportunity. But if he's already making $5 million, there's diminishing returns.

> But I would argue that Saban is easily 10x more important to Alabama's success than any single athlete on the team.

Maybe they should pay him 10x more than they pay the students then. What's that work out to? If the students are being compensated with free tuition, 10x that is probably a few hundred thousand dollars, right?

> probably the most underpaid state employee

What about the athletes themselves who are taking years off their lives, while getting absolutely no compensation?

If we're solely talking about underpaid, then the absolute peak value of a college football player at the top of the game is probably under 10 million. IMO, the value of Saban is probably closer to 60 or 70 million[0], so he is more underpaid. Of course, the situation for players is a much more egregious underpayment.

[0] Really hard to quantify, but comparing the revenue effects and higher order revenue generation of programs with elite head coaches to mediocre head coaches leads to this value.

Depends on how you're measuring. Saban is making about 8mil (lazy math) and you think he's worth 70. Let's go crazy, and say he's actually even more valuable, and worth 80 million.

So he's making about 1/10th what he should, or 10% of his value.

Best student athlete is worth 8 million. They make $0. They're making 0% of their total value back.

The cost of the education is meaningless. It's all arbitrary and basically monopoly money costs. Oh, you're getting a full ride to a school that would normally charge you $50K? That's great, but it's not of real value in the same way that actual cash is.

This is why I'm a big fan of California's move to allow students to take endorsements.

They get room, board, all they can eat, an education (with an incredible amount of tutoring that is not available to the average student) and training that they absolutely could not get anywhere else. There's no market for minor league football in the US and there never will be.

Of course there won't be. Why would you create a minor league football program when you're competing against colleges that have: 1- Long term history with their fans 2- Better proximity to fanbases 3- No labor costs for their players 4- Stadiums and infrastructure already in place.

There is a market for minor league football, and that market is being met by college sports.

> What about the athletes themselves who are taking years off their lives, while getting absolutely no compensation?

1. They are compensated with a degree, and not to mention the "luxury" benefits that come with being an athlete: better food, housing, tutors, golf carts for class, etc.

2. No one is forcing them to go to college.

>20% of D1 college players don't even graduate.

If you get injured, poof scholarship

Just because no one is forcing them to do it doesn’t mean it’s not exploitative. No one forces people to work in sweatshops.

1. Sports can be financed by tuition and grants like everything else. Sports don't need to be expensive affairs with big travel and stadium budgets.

2. Since the pseudo-pro athletes are playing sports instead of studying, That's fake diversity of two separate programs in one building, like counting the cafe and janitorial staff in FAANG diversity. Better diversity would be letting diverse students in, not diverse football players. Letting students in explicitly because they provide muscle doesn't move society forward.

3. That's negative-sum, like the skyrocketing tuition due to making campuses into luxury country clubs just to compete with other schools. Rankings don't improve anything for the students and society at Aleve across the country.

4. Is negative sum. Football parties aren't a special benefit. Alcoholism and associated vices (like sexual assault) aren't a boon to a university's mission.

Thank you for a very rare educated post in a HN discussion around sports. Wish this was a top level comment to get voted higher up.

Regarding 1) Can the title IX issue be resolved by separating the sport budgets from academic budgets? If the football programs receive no money from the general budget, is their mere existence discriminatory, assuming equal numbers of scholarships are given to female athletes?

No, the number of scholarships is the issue, not the source of the dollars.