Money Troubles

Old Man Pike sent me a link this morning to an article about the current "controversy" surrounding UConn men's basketball coach, Jim Calhoun. I will be the first to admit that I am not a fan of Mr. Calhoun or his Huskies (being a life long BC fan will do that to you), but this so-called controversy seems a bit absurd and misplaced.

Let's recap. A "reporter" who may or may not have even belonged at a UConn press conference began asking questions the other day about how appropriate it was for Jim Calhoun (technically a state employee) to be making $1.6 million dollars a year to coach basketball considering the state of the economy and the tight budgets that all state governments have been on lately. Calhoun got upset and now has a YouTube worthy rant about the money his program brings in and yelling about "facts" that has made the rounds on all the shows and all the on-line chat rooms.

First, let me say that this was an incredibly inappropriate question at this time. The man is up there to talk about basketball not the economy. This is not the forum to have a debate about the way the state government is spending its money. Calhoun did not make the decision to have UConn pay him that money and does not have the insight into the administration's reasoning to allocating that much of their budget into his pocket. If this were a Connecticut state house hearing on government spending this would be an appropriate line of questioning. Wrong time and wrong person to ask.

Let's not demonize Jim Calhoun here either (as much as we may want to). It's not his fault. All he did was negotiate a contract just like every other NCAA Division I coach does. Let's not forget there are many coaches across the country making around the same amount of money as Jim Calhoun who are working for state institutions and are technically state employees. I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of all the various school budgets but I assure you that Calhoun is not the only one making a large salary when the state is struggling. You want someone to blame, look to the university administrators who approved the salary. But you really can't blame them either because there is a good reason to keep and/or lure a great coach to your school.

Calhoun brought up a very good point when he talked about how much money he and the program bring in to the school. Sure, there are the tangible things such as ticket sales and merchandising and such. But there are things that you cannot quantify when you are talking about a successful college athletic program. My friend once told me that Doug Flutie was the reason that he went to Boston College. So while a high US News & World Report rankings, making the campus attractive, and having great professors may buy you a lot of students, the fact is a good athletic program makes your school more attractive and drives up applications which allows the school to drive up enrollment and pricing. Jim Calhoun has done that for UConn.

I am not disparaging the educational institution of UConn. I'm not implying that people only go there because of the basketball team. But it would be naive to think that the success of the men's (and the women's) basketball teams has not affected enrollment at UConn. Remember that the income from sports does get funnelled back into the university and helps pay for other improvements around campus that are not sports related.

To have great teams to bring in that money, however, you need great coaches. In order to compete for those top coaches, schools like UConn need to pay top dollar. I'm not here to debate whether they should be paid that or not. When new budgets come up and some of these coaches' contracts expire, if the economy has not turned around, I think some of these state institutions are going to have to look long and hard at these salaries. The point is, don't harass the coaches for something that is out of their control. The institution decides how to spend their funds and the economic benefit must have outweighed the expense for them. I may not like Jim Calhoun but this is not a reason to hate him.