Athletic Success Over-Valued? Academic Success Under-Valued?
Courtesy of John Wilner at the Mercury, click here to view details about Tedford’s latest contract.
For me, this article brings to mind the statement so often heard regarding college football head coaching salaries: the fact that universities pay a larger salary to college football head coaches than professors is proof that the university values the success of the football team over achieving oustanding academics.
I absolutely hate hearing the above statement because I don’t think it’s true. Just because a college football head coach is paid more than a university professor does not mean the university values a successful college football team over great academics.
I think most people forget that the two professions are entirely different, they have their own salary bell curves, and vastly different responsibilities.
Here is a pretty cool website which shows the average professor salaries. As you can see, Cal and UCLA have some of the highest professor salaries for public universities.
If you bothered to check the highest salaries of professors across the entire nation, private schools pay the most. In fact, Stanfurd apparently pays the third highest salaries to the their professors. Obviously, they’ve over-valued their second rate professors and the education they provide.
But back to the argument.
Even the highest paid professors earning over $185k a year do not earn anywhere near what some of the bottom dweller coaches earn (here is a cool USA Today article showing CFB head coach’s salaries). That right there seems to be the proof that the going rate for a CFB head coach is much more than a professor no matter how bad the CFB head coach may be.
For example, a university may have the best and highest paid professors in the nation, but if they want to have a football program then they’re going to have to shell out around twice as much than they spend on the professor just to secure a crappy D1A head coach.
So just because Tedford earns millions means that Cal values Tedford more than George Smoot? Nah. Cal values both, but Tedford just comes with a higher price tag.
