The Problem With Education: Coaching Salaries

The Problem With Education: Coaching Salaries

A big problem with education can be seen when Oregon Ducks Football Coach, Chip Kelly, signs a 6 year contract extension worth…get this…$20.5 million dollars.  Now, look…I have nothing against a guy making as much money as he possibly can, but this insanity has GOT TO STOP.  As our educational system continues to crumble, we need to give some of his paycheck to say, I don’t know, maybe some of our middle school teachers.  This discrepancy of funding is a big problem with education and our system as a whole.

We all know that collegiate sports and subsequent ticket sales bring a university money for their ever-shrinking budgets, but is one person worth that much money?  If the players aren’t paid, how can we justify paying…

…one man a whopping $20.5 million for 6 years of work?  We won’t talk about what Pete Carrol made during his run at USC.

Imagine what we could do with that kind of money in the world of education.  Will you ever see a professor of English or a professor of Mathematics make that amount of money?  In their entire career?  No, but does that make their discipline worth $20 million dollars less than the game of football?  If you ask me, that’s a problem with education and our society.

If the NCAA won’t pay their players, and there’s a limited amount of coaching jobs in the NFL, why not implement a salary cap on coaches?  Come on NCAA, what do you say?  How about we the people agree to give our mighty football coaches $1 million dollars per year?  Sounds like an awesome paying job given this economy, or any economy for that matter.

With the NCAA’s new salary cap for coaches, our buddy old pal Chip Kelly’s contract is now worth $6 million dollars for six years.  This would then leave the university some $14 MILLION….that’s $14 MILLION DOLLARS EXTRA for the school’s budget and the ED-U-CATION of its students!  That is still why the doors of our universities are open, right?  To teach our children?

Imagine what $14 million dollars could do for the students of the university?  Median annual earnings of all postsecondary teachers in May 2008 was a paltry $58,830. The high end, some 10% of all college professors, make an average of $121,000 per year.  At the new NCAA coaching salary cap of $1 million dollars a year, good ol’ boy Chip Kelly would still make 8x the top 10% of all collegiate professors.  PROFESSORS, mind you.  PHD holders.  Not clipboard motivators.  Have we become so lost in America that a PHD holder makes less than a coach of a game like football?

What kind of message are we sending if the greatest university system in the entire world only cares about making better football players and not better students.  Fact is, most of these players won’t make the NFL, so how about we create more educated people instead of a rapidly growing crowd of knucklehead football players.

This is your Uncle E reminding you that every moment is another adventure waiting to happen.  SEE YA!!!!!

Eric DelaBarre is an award winning filmmaker and the author of Saltwater Taffy: A Novel of Adventure & Self-discovery. Copyright September 30, 2010 All Rights Reserved.