In 1929, the average salary of head football coaches was a little more than $6,000 – about $65,000 adjusted for inflation.
That amount of money probably wouldn’t turn heads today, but it was enough then to spark heated public dialogue about ethics and money in college athletics.
The Carnegie Reports on the study of college athletics that listed that figure included remarks from scholars and educators at odds with, “The paid coach, the gate receipts, the special training tables, the costly sweaters and extensive journeys in Pullman cars, the recruiting from the high school, the demoralizing publicity showered on the players, the devotion of an undue proportion of the time to training.”
Despite the calls to action, not much has changed in college athletics since then – except the Pullman cars, of course.
Complete article from The Daily Tarhell
Additional Reading from SFN:
NC State’s Coaching Salaries
Equity in Athletics
Schools file a report with the Federal Government each year. The report predominately deals with athletics, such as total numbers of athletes for each sport and some really broad, mostly undefined financial figures from the athletic department. All of the data is compiled and is available to the public at the Equity in Athletics Website.
Unfortunately, they don’t archive the reports from one year to the next, so trending is not possible. However, after looking at a number of schools over the last several years, I am left with the impression that more and more schools are playing games with the numbers:
– For example, the first year that I look at the numbers only UMD’s athletic department broke even. The last time I went through the reports, I found several that broke even….revenues matching expenses to the nearest dollar on budgets exceeding $20M per year.
– A couple of years ago, the numbers presented at this website showed that Duke football generated more revenue than NC State’s.
The Daily Tarhell article points out some differences between numbers presented to the NCAA and to Federal Government. Adding these differences to the oddities mentioned above means is that I no longer put much faith into the financial numbers reported at the Equity in Athletics website.
This might be something to remember this summer/fall because invariably various newspapers will write an article based solely on the numbers presented at this website. If you can’t trust the raw data, you certainly shouldn’t trust any conclusion drawn from that data.
