Evidence of Deep Craziness: A Thread by Dale Wisely

[The Weekenders]

Well, someone pointed out professional celebrities like Maury Povich and such... which brings up my observation. Why do you expect a football salary to be rational when so many other salaries in this world are not based on rational, ordered morality or priority?

Hey, there is always the model of the school-teacher, near the bottom of the educated professional class in salary. After that, it's all crazy really, considering their overall assignment...I was pondering the fact that ministers don't make much, but psychologists/therapists do....Infer for yerself about that..

In California, some of our highest-paid relative to time spent in training are prison guards...

It's just more of the same chaos to me. But yes, I think that any way you can at least influence colleges not to go so crazy about football has to be a good thing. My little part is in thinking that no, we don't need playoffs for college teams, just to satisfy sportwriters and stat-weenies. . A bowl game is good enough.

Don't you always wonder how much "studying" those guys do??? I played in a flute-guitar duo for years, and the flute player was a graduate teaching assistant at UC-Berkeley (they do all the undergrad teaching while the professors quietly live in luxury, molesting cute grad students punctuated by the occasional research paper or sumthin).. Anyhoo, she flunked Ron Rivera, who went on to play for the Chicago Bears. She didn't know who he was anyway, which was funny in itself.

Speaking of college f-ball, the Fiesta Bowl Boise-OK game the other night was the most completely exciting college game I ever saw, period. I feel lucky I bothered to watch it, which was basically an accident. I still can't quite get over the dynamics of that one. Go, Boise!!! Didn't hurt that 43 of their players are from Calaforny.

[dwinterfield]

I share your dismay at our societies willingness to pay for sports, talk show hosts, Mick and the boys, actors etc.

That said remember that the coach is a commodity. The trustees of the University of Alabama should be fired if they're not making money on the deal. Think about the NCAA football TV contract. The premier college bowl games pay the participating schools between $7m and $15m each to participate. I think Alabama expects Sabin to put them in those games every year. If he does, $4m is cheap.

Remember the $4m is the product of all the 1/4 pounders, toothpaste, Toyotas etc that we call buy because (in theory) we see these things advertised on college football games. I've always assumed advertisers pay because it works for them.

What a country!

[harpmaker]

Well, I am sure that at least one member of the forum thinks this salary is justified. After all "The answer to that is that a job is worth whatever you can get someone to pay you for doing it."

I think someone, or a whole group of people, at this school should have their heads examined.

Side note about wages. There is an uproar going on locally about school supers getting salaries up around $300,000...and their districts are going downhill!

[djm]

So, suppose each "i" is one million dollars. Here's what $4,000,000 looks like:

iiii

Sorry, but I don't understand this at all. Which i's are you referring to?

It is foolish to waste time discussing the costs or salaries of sports figures with people who place no value on sports. There is a pro baseball pitcher who was just recently offered US $126,000,000.00 for a seven year contract. If that doesn't boggle your big-number-o-tron I don't know what will.

It is just good business to charge whatever the market will bear. The fact that these people are actually getting these numbers indicates that those with the money value sports more than academia. This is a reflection on academia, its inability to attract support, even from its own members.

Sort of sideways, but I would love to have an outdoors job, perhaps a manual skill that I could produce something and be proud of it. Unfortunately, our society places the lowest value on this type of work, and I would be making a quarter of my current salary with such a job.

I cannot explain our society or its values, but I know where the dollars are.

djm

[BillChin]

I don't understand the upset. $4 million is small potatoes for sports figures, and entertainers. Backup point guards in basketball, and serviceable middle relief pitchers in baseball often get more. Jay Leno makes $50 million a year. Howard Stern more than that.

I guess it is Alabama so that is why Dale is posting. However, to add more perspective, the average price for a Manhattan apartment is now $1 million. That is for an average apartment and it may be in a not so nice area or in a 100 year old building with inconsistent heat and water. Similar prices are realized in many major cities, and not just American cities.

At some point something has to give, however, the price of things, and the salaries and bonuses that some make, continue to spiral out of control.

As a reminder 20% of the world's population lives on less than $1 a day. To the billion plus people living on that level, virtually any American's salary is an unimaginable and grossly unfair sum. In today's global economy, no single country, or government can control the wealth, or the equality of wealth. There is a storm brewing somewhere, but I believe that it is still probably decades away.

[cowtime]

Speaking of working outside-

I work outside 80% of my work day and it is nice, I must say.Drivin' around my route, listenin' to some good tunes, seeing the occasional customer.... Except for this week, when thanks to the Monday holiday, plus the day of mourning for former President Ford, we had four days worth of mail on the floor when I went back to work on Wednesday. I took out over 7 feet of catalogs today, not counting the other mail(63 packages and all the first class letters, and tomorrow is going to be more of the same). Oh well, I guess there's always a trade off. Yuck, I just remembered they are predicting rain tomorrow. Guess I'll be drenched all day . Some days it's not nice, working outside....[/quote]

[Wombat]

Wait a minute. Isn't college sport in the USA amateur sport? It certainly is in Australia and Britain. Here, a football match involving a university side might draw about 300 friends to watch but the University populace as a whole wouldn't know if the team has won or lost from week to week.

I discovered to my amazement that people actually pay to watch the American college kiddies play and that teams draw big crowds like professional sports. But I was told that the attraction is that this is amateur sport. Now, if the coach of an amateur sporting team is being paid 4 million a year, it's starting not to make any sense to me again.

In India, cricket is probably the biggest sport. More people follow international cricket (not college cricket) in India than there are people in the whole of the USA. A test cricketer, whether Indian or foreign, would be mobbed if he appeared without an army of minders on the streets of India—the recognition factor is dangerously high. It's a little more relaxed in other countries but I've seen ex-cricketers retired for 20 years walking about looking wary, afraid of being recognised and stopped. Nobody earns 1 million a year from cricket anywhere in the world, to my knowledge, even though it is a fully professional sport, and even though a test match, played over 5 days, could attract an attendance of 250,000 customers paying serious money for seats. The highest profile cricketers might earn a million or more from sponsorships, but that sort of top-up would be pretty rare.

Elsewhere in the world, soccer probably rivals American sports for stupidity in payments, but this is only the top professional clubs. What would a soccer player in, say, the Scottish second division earn? Not much, I think.

[Lorenzo]

Speaking of college f-ball, the Fiesta Bowl Boise-OK game the other night was the most completely exciting college game I ever saw, period. I feel lucky I bothered to watch it, which was basically an accident. I still can't quite get over the dynamics of that one. Go, Boise!!! Didn't hurt that 43 of their players are from Calaforny.

I watched it, quite by accident too. One of the best games ever.

[Lorenzo]

P.S. With all due respect to coaches everywhere:

He's a COACH. He's a FOOTBALL COACH. A COACH. He's a COACH.

What I want to scream is:

It's a UNIVERSITY. A Institution of HIGHER learning. A UNIVERSITY. You know: like, BOOKS.

By saying that, I assume you don't realize that many of these college athletes are also scholars, graduating with honors. Some later become coaches. I was surprised to learn recently that Gerald Ford was offered a postion with two pro football teams, but chose instead to finish his law degree at Yale and then join the Navy.

[Innocent Bystander]

Two questions about this coach.
Can he play pennywhistle?
How is he on dodgeball?
(That's assuming it is a "he", of course.)

[Tyler]

speaking of dodgeball...

why isn't dodgeball more of a professional sport? gosh....

[crookedtune]

It's a natural human instinct to enjoy sports. Big business is all about exploiting such eccentricities in human nature.

If you want to fight back but still enjoy sports, think MINOR LEAGUES!

In NC it's teams like (baseball) Carolina Mudcats and Durham Bulls. They're a lot of fun to watch, and contribute to our sense of community in a positive way.

I boycott college-level and major-league professional sports events across the board, and recommend that course to my friends and family.

[brewerpaul]

I recall hearing a discussion on NPR about this general issue quite a while ago. One of the very articulate sports writers opined that for the big college teams, they could acknowledge them for what they are: professional sports teams which are huge fundraisers for the universities. Make no bones about it, hire pro players rather than going through the sham of "student" players who often get greased through the academic system just to make it officially a "student" team. Let the college use the teams as the moneymakers that they are with no illusion that these are really amateur atheletes.
I know that there are MANY shining examples of great college players who also were great students and went on to great careers outside of sports eg Bill Bradley, Jack Kemp etc. However, these are the exception rather than the rule.

[fearfaoin]

ACADEME, n.

• An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

ACADEMY, n.

• [from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught.

-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

[Innocent Bystander]

It's a natural human instinct to enjoy sports.

So I'm not human? I've often suspected...