Greg Jayne’s column this morning addressed one of my major pet peeves (“Money makes mess of football,” The Columbian, Aug. 21). The highest-paid employees on college campuses are not the professors or the career counselors or even the administrators. No, they are the sports coaches.
The average college football coach is paid $6.69 million dollars per year. The highest paid (so far) is Kirby Smart (Georgia) at $11.25 million. Pretty impressive when you consider that only 1.6 percent of college players will actually make it to the pros.
But the real tragedy is that as tuitions increase dramatically, the toll on students who attend to achieve a degree are either priced out or saddled with massive debt by graduation. The U.S. leads the world in student debt so paying millions to sports coaches seems excessive.
School sports are great tools for teaching kids about being part of a team and how to cooperate and get along with others but by the time they reach college they should have accomplished that. I agree with Greg. There should be a “minor league” for those aspiring to play football professionally. All that money could be better used to provide actual education at a lower cost to all.
