The lovely and talented John Warner writes that coach’s salaries should be part of the higher education discussion. At the same time, the Chicago Public Schools have suspended two coaches for bad behavior during a game that ended with a shooting in the parking lot afterward.
I’m a believer in sports for kids and adults. Exercise, team play, testing limits – these are all things people learn in athletics. However, sports teams quickly get channeled into elite play, leaving many kids behind. In my perfect world, there would be more sports, but at a lower level of competitive intensity.
Very, very few college programs make money. Manti Te’s scandal isn’t affecting his coursework, because he is not in school right now; instead, it’s a distraction from his training for the NFL draft.
This is a legitimate question. Some universities are cutting back on adjuncts’ hours so that they won’t have to give them health insurance. Others are enlarging classes and increasing tuition. At the same time, there are fewer and fewer full-time traditional students who have the time and the energy to be rah-rah fans or use campus athletic facilities.
Parents and taxpayers need to start asking questions about this. How many scholarships, how much employee health insurance, could be provided if the football coach were paid like an engineering professor?
And we haven’t even gotten into the issue of what happens if universities are found liable for head injuries to athletes. The University of Chicago, which left the Big Ten in 1939, looks pretty smart.
