The state of Washington pays multimillion dollar salaries to college coaches

http://fiscal.wa.gov/salaries.aspx

by tomcam • 5 years ago

43 75 5 years ago

fiscal.wa.gov

almost_usual2• 5 years ago

This isn’t a surprise, highest paid public officials are athletic coaches.

https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/28261213/dabo-s...

colinmhayes3• 5 years ago

The highest paid employees of every state are the football coaches, then basketball coaches. They're paid this much because they're worth it. Not only does football bring in a huge amount of money with tv deals and tickets/concessions but they make students more likely to attend too. That causes the all important rankings to go up. They make alumni more likely to return to campus and therefore more likely to donate.

almost_usual2• 5 years ago

Nit: There are definitely states where basketball coaches are paid more than football coaches.

peter422• 5 years ago

Even the bad ones that are terrible and below replacement level are worth it?

I don’t think so. Some coaches are “worth it”, many are not.

nixgeek• 5 years ago

But the "many are not" flies in the face of a market economy and the fact nobody is forced to pay this compensation. It's your opinion they aren't worth it and you aren't the person writing the check. You're certainly entitled to this opinion :)

Arguably, success as a professional coach is substantially more objective and less subjective than many professions. Professional sports analyze everything. Statistics is huge both for the fans and the teams. Is the team winning? For colleges especially, you have annual turnover in student ranks so more in-and-out of players than NHL, NFL, NBA, etc etc. That's got to be tricky to manage. You have to attract talent to the institution and develop it when there.

So the simple fact is these coaches are able to demand these packages (and get them!). Someone out there has to write the checks and believes the performance and outcomes justifies the cost, that they are "worth it".

macinjosh• 5 years ago

Seems like scope creep for an educational institution to me.

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

More just an incredibly lucrative side business in a way that the main business can never be.

Raising $10 million for a stadium is far easier than raising a $10 million endowment for a science lab.

But when alumni come back for the football, you can hit them up for money for the science lab.

brightball• 5 years ago

Yep. I always chuckle when people are surprised by this stuff.

Florida State was about to become an all girl school in the 1970s before Bobby Bowden saved their football program.

Clemson’s applications skyrocketed in 1977 when they beat Georgia early in the year and run consistently higher any years in which the team is having success.

Donations increase. Alumni come to games, get together, see their friends, show their kids around campus, tell stories.

No matter what your major, the activities that we can all enjoy together bring us together.

jgalt212• 5 years ago

I doubt Greg Schiano has had anything but an extractive relationship with the state of New Jersey and its tax payers.

bumby4• 5 years ago

The timeline is interesting, because it’s my understanding that the 1980s is when college tuition began rapidly increasing [1]. Granted, there’s many other factors like govt backed loans, but inflated coach salaries seems to coincide [2]. The 1980s seemed to mark the beginning of an era when college was run more as a business than a purely educationally minded institution. I’m not sure society is better off for it.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/college/2017/06/09/private-co...

[2] https://www.bannersociety.com/platform/amp/2019/8/15/2073219...

JamesSwift3• 5 years ago

Well, they are paid that much because that money is coming in and they sure as hell aren't going to give it to the athletes. So the coach is next in line. Things would look quite different if athletes were able to negotiate salary.

ralph84• 5 years ago

Indeed, in pro sports even average players earn more than their head coaches/managers.

philwelch3• 5 years ago

Coaches also make a much bigger difference in college sports, because the athletes only have four years of eligibility, and you're lucky to get that much. The best basketball players all leave college after 1-2 years (closer to 0-1 for the very best) while football players usually need more time to develop. The best coaches can build a system that different players can slot into year after year and also recruit the best prospects coming out of high school. Meanwhile in the professional leagues, you have a decent chance of holding onto the best players for much longer than 4 years.

selimthegrim• 5 years ago

I think Steve Weinberg demanded to be paid at least as much as the football coach at UT Austin

8note• 5 years ago

You'd think the players are similarly worth it.

tengbretson• 5 years ago

Ask the top talent in the country if they'd rather play for a team coached by Rich Rodriguez for 50k a year, or Nick Saban for free.

varelse• 5 years ago

And yet back in the '90s the woman I was dating got two simultaneous fellowships from two separate sources completely legally. The university then invoked some sort of rule capping her compensation and took the rest.

MisterBastahrd2• 5 years ago

Another reason that this is possible is because these coaches are sort of state employees on a technicality. The funds are raised by boosters and paid through the athletic foundation associated with the university. Most of the largest universities have their entire athletic budgets funded through a combination of donations and revenue from live men's football and basketball games, both in-stadium and television money.

tomcam4• 5 years ago

The funds are raised by boosters and paid through the athletic foundation associated with the university.

So they donate to the state general fund or something?

WalterBright5• 5 years ago

Caltech in the 70's was notable for the average IQ of the football players being higher than their average weight. A season was considered triumphant if the team did better than 100% losses.

I never went to a game, none of my friends did, and had no idea who the players were or when the games were. It was kinda nice not being at a football collage.

WalterBright5• 5 years ago

About 30 years ago or so, I was invited to a Superbowl party. I thought I'd be sociable and give it a try.

The party was nice, and eventually someone asked me which team I was rooting for. I said the guys in the blue shirts.

That didn't go over well at all.

basedgod• 5 years ago

there's no college football team in the world that averages less than 160lbs, and 160 iq average is impossible for a football team

or any number you'd pick. don't make things up

User232• 5 years ago

The smartest man to play NFL football is Pat McInally[1] and his IQ, estimated from the wonderlic, is north of 155. He played for a little college in Massachusetts in his amateur days.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_McInally

hristov• 5 years ago

Try UCI, which does not have a football team at all. Legend has it that when land baron Donald Bren donated the land for UCI to be built on, he specifically forced the new college to agree that it will never have a football team so that he did not have to deal with drunkenness and rowdiness in the perfect little college town he was planning to build around UCI.

It worked for Donald Bren, he built Irvine, Irvine became a very safe and very expensive town, and Bren became very rich because of it. UCI, on the other hand, has had a reputation for being boring for its entire existence. But I peronally liked the absence of jocks.

rboes4• 5 years ago

"was notable for the average IQ of the football players being higher than their average weight"

That is absolutely impossible sorry

lr1970• 5 years ago

Caltech in the 70's was notable for the average IQ of the football players being higher than their average weight.

You forgot to mention that the weight should be expressed in kilograms. Otherwise, if expressed in pounds this would be a Mensa dream team :-)

gregwebs• 5 years ago

Football making lots of money is a myth because there are many hidden costs. A big one is the cost of the stadium and this comes out of a different budget (sometimes student fees).

Not saying that there aren't some schools coming out ahead, just saying that modeling this out is a lot more complicated and often when this is done carefully by academics doing studies most programs that people think of as succesful are losing money. Similar with pro sports, often the cost of the hundred million dollar stadium, etc is not necessarily recouped.

waynecochran• 5 years ago

UW football, at least in the past, makes a ton of money. I assume all the other sports lose money. I attended UW in the Don James era so its been awhile.

rectang• 5 years ago

Classically, you couldn't count on local newspaper reporting about these costs either, because sports pages sold papers.

One thing that makes me feel good about living in San Diego is that we've repeatedly told begging billionaires looking to grift their stadiums out of our city taxes to go fuck themselves.

philwelch3• 5 years ago

https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/husky-stadium-renova...

The renovation of Husky Stadium received the green light to proceed when the University of Washington Board of Regents approved the $250 million project in November.
The project—*which will not use any public or University funds*—is scheduled to get under way just before the end of the 2011 football season.

...

The Department of Intercollegiate Athletics will fund the renovation through 30-year bonds. In addition, the UW is seeking major gift donations of $50 million as well as $200 million in new revenue from naming rights, season tickets and premium seating to cover the cost.

The story is similar for the renovation of Martin Stadium at WSU, which was largely paid for with TV revenue.

It turns out that you can make a lot of money in sports if you don't have to pay the players.

dehrmann• 5 years ago

I suspect all name-brand Division I schools come out ahead on football.

rboes4• 5 years ago

They rarely pay for those stadiums

seanmcdirmid• 5 years ago

These head football coaches are also just as easily fired if they lose a few games, so it’s not like their salaries are easy money. They have to perform, and are just as likely not to get lucky with a good team (they have to make their own luck). It seems a bit too much pressure for me, much easier and profitable to work your way up at a big tech, or get that MD and become head of the medical school or cancer institute (the other highest paid public employees).

V-eHGsd_• 5 years ago

they are mostly contract based positions, no? I believe this is guaranteed money.

dsizzle4• 5 years ago

Yeah, the headline weirdly implies Washington is unusual in this regard.

tomcam4• 5 years ago

What would be a less misleading headline with HN's 80-character limit?

bufferoverflow• 5 years ago

Worth to whom? As a taxpayer, I don't see that money coming back to me.

deepsun• 5 years ago

Ok, but why state taxpayers have to pay for that?

colinmhayes3• 5 years ago

Major football programs all make money when you count the donations and goodwill they bring in.

enjoyyourlife• 5 years ago

It is similar in California: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/all/?&s=-total

rboes4• 5 years ago

and every state

bargle0• 5 years ago

How much if this comes out of student fees versus other athletic department revenue?

mercurywells• 5 years ago

Typically there's a base salary covered by the state, low to mid 6 figures. Donors pitch in for the 7 figure part of it.

crb• 5 years ago

The guy at the top won't be there next year. "In October of 2021, after refusing to comply with Washington's requirement for state employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, Rolovich was terminated by WSU."

1cvmask• 5 years ago

It’s interesting to see how sports is orphaned in academia in the rest of the world. You either leave school to be a real sports athlete or stay at university and do sports on a more ad hoc intramural level. The sports staff and coaches, if any, make a paltry salary compared to other staff in the university.

rhizome3• 5 years ago

Post-high school football and basketball should be separated from education and run like the farm systems for baseball and hockey (US). Opponents of this idea tend to drag out a "but what about the korfball team?" argument, but I don't think it'd change those sports at that level too much. With any justice the big sports would have been contributing to an endowment for the smaller sports all these years that would be used for a future without stadium sports at the university level.

brandonmenc2• 5 years ago

Or just create like, "football studies" programs.

Pro sports is complicated enough (the business, the history, the game itself) at this point to warrant an undergraduate degree.

rurban• 5 years ago

What about their chess coaches? Or table tennis? They would be perfect fit for colleges

The state of Washington pays multimillion dollar salaries to college coaches

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