If the average university has more than 10 professors, they are paying more in wages to professors than head football coaches. And if you figure the total amount paid in tuition in a year across the country, I'm guessing that will be a much larger number than the amount spent on tickets and television rights and merchandising for college football.

So, I disagree that professors are a cost center for a university and that, as a society, we invest more overall in head football coaches than in educators.

A look at some of those perks: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2006-11-16-c...

"About 10% of coaches get a cut of ticket revenue; Oregon's Mike Bellotti got $631,000 [in 2006] under such a provision."

I read somewhere that the football revenue from some universities can support the sports programs for all the other sports. That's probably true for the big college programs that have large fan bases, like Notre Dame and many SEC schools.

Sadly, a significant part of alumni contribution can be earmarked for sports and football/basketball in particular. [Sad because this is the state of affairs, not that contributors can donate to specific programs.] Those boosters pay for the new locker rooms and stadiums. It's an arms race to get the best facilities to attract the best athletes and get wins. (I heard the facilities at NC State were impressively professional.)

NY Times recently profiled Stanford's additional compensation to coaches for Palo Alto real estate: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/sports/ncaafootball/10stan...

What proportion of football-related revenue subsidizes a university's academic department, and what proportion is just plowed back into the football program?

I don't know, but I guarantee Ohio State makes hundreds of millions and pays Jim Tressel one or two.

The article left out an interesting factoid, which is that many of them are the highest paid state employees in their state.

From the USA Today article I linked above: "At Texas, for example, the return on the sizable investment in Brown is a pre-eminent football program that last season won the school's first football national championship in 35 years and accounted for 62% of all the Longhorns' athletics revenues, turning a $42 million profit. Football essentially underwrote 17 other sports at the school that don't make money -- all but men's basketball and baseball."

I'm not sure if the profit takes into account university merchandise. Powerhouse football programs sell lots and lots of university clothing, and the universities make money off the licensing.

That would certainly seem to justify coach salaries.

Actually OSU only has 30-40 million in revenues. http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/subdir/college-...

What they don't tell you is that they are lucky to break even if you take into account the hidden costs. The next time they do a 15 million stadium renovation, it won't be counted against the athletic department's budget.

Since when should we consider universities as for-profit institutions?

I don't have a position on whether they SHOULD be for-profit, but here's a list of many which are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_for-profit_colleges_and...

But none of those schools have big-time football programs.

Ever watch a game on Saturday afternoon? Mixed in with all the ads for Nike, etc. are messages about how "this school really cares about academics", etc.