Sharp: College football reeks of hypocrisy with coach salaries

Dr. Rebecca M. Blank(Photo: Courtesy photo) It’s insane that a college football coach could make more than $7 million annually. It’s especially crazy in a multibillion-dollar sports/entertainment entity that still — laughingly — passes itself off as a nonprofit operation in order to maintain its federal antitrust protection. But it’s the price of doing business. Or rather, the price of doing “nonprofit business.” It’s an approach dripping with hypocrisy. Michigan should be able to pay Jim Harbaugh whatever it can because college football coaching is a market-driven profession. According to a USA TODAY Sports coaching salary study, Harbaugh is set to be the second-highest-paid college football coach this season — behind Alabama’s Nick Saban — at more than $7 million. Free market rules. But don’t these university and athletic administrators know how stupid they sound when they attempt to balance the realities of competitive compensation for coaches with the absurdities of unfairly limiting the financial cost of college attendance to the football players? And isn’t how they make such incongruity sound practical to so many the greatest trick the NCAA ever pulled off…

Continue Reading: Sharp: College football reeks of hypocrisy with coach salaries