Out Of Control Salaries For College Coaches

Hawk Central has a big story today on the meteoric rise in football coach salaries:

Pick any numbers you like to define college football's premier teams -- points scored, yards allowed.

Or the big money earned by their coaches.

The sport's dizzying salaries spiral has come to this, a USA Today study finds: The million-dollar coach, once a rarity, is now the norm. Head coaches at the NCAA's top-level schools are making an average of $950,000 this year, not counting benefits, incentives, subsidized housing or any of the perks they routinely receive. At least 42 of the 119 Division I-A coaches are earning $1 million or more this year, up from five in 1999.

Jim Tressel, coach of No. 1-ranked Ohio State, and Mack Brown, who steered Texas to the national championship a year ago, are among the nine coaches making more than $2 million. Iowa's Kirk Ferentz will pocket a guaranteed $4.6 million in a 13-month period ending next June, including $1.8 million in one-time payments. With the incentive bonuses he still can earn, he could push his take to more than $4.7 million. That is the most among the 107 coaches for whom USA Today could obtain a contract or other official document showing compensation.

Iowa is currently 6-5 overall, but 2-5 in the Big Ten conference.

Overall, Ferentz has been a good successor to Hayden Fry. Ferentz just didn't have much to work with in IQ-challenged quarterback Drew Tate.

Here's something to ask yourself: What did Hayden Fry earn during his last year as the football coach at Iowa? I think the answer may shock you.

In the 1997 fiscal year, Hayden Fry was paid $264,159 to coach the Iowa Hawkeye men's football team.

Who allowed compensation to go bonkers over the past decade? Nobody put their foot down and said that $4.7 million for a college football coach is an obscene amount of money.

Is society lacking in qualified individuals to coach the Hawkeyes to 2-5 in the Big Ten conference and suffer a humiliating defeat to Northwestern at, say, $500,000 a year?

When does it end? If the football coach's salary was allowed to go up nearly 20 times in the past decade, how much will it be in 2017? Will Kirk Ferentz be earning $90 million a year then? Because that's the rate his salary has been increasing.