In response to a question about the escalating salaries of college coaches, [Penn State President] Spanier explained the school's position on the subject.
"The free enterprise market-oriented side of me says the market's the market and we have to deal with that," he told the group. "...On this issue, because Tim (Curley) doesn't have any loose change sitting around in his budget and Penn State is not going to be able to get into an arms race in Intercollegiate Athletics, our philosophy is that our coaches should be paid a fair salary and we think we can pay a fair salary. But we can't go out and be offering $1 million, $2 million salaries to coaches ...
Good God.
Frankly, folks, in the grand scheme of things, out of all the things a person could do with their life, being a college football coach is an incredibly silly thing.
It’s fun. It brings great pleasure to many people. But you’re devoting your life to instructing teenagers how to break down zone coverage, or defend the option.
And, let’s be honest, these are things that, in this life, really--they just don’t come up that often.
They don’t.
So, I know that. I’m not insane. I don’t really think a guy who devotes his entire life and all his efforts into matching up little X’s and O’s is really deserving of millions of dollars a year.
But, you know, things are what they are. Utility infielders, hitting .220 make a million dollars a year, inner city school teachers make $25,000.
So, anyway, Graham Spanier, the Preznit of Penn State, unbelievably says Penn State can’t afford to pay a million or two dollars a year for a top notch coach.
Beaver Stadium seats over 108,000 people. There’s only one school in the Big Ten—Michigan--and maybe one or two other schools in the country with bigger stadiums then Penn State.
And even last year, with its horrendous record and lousy offering of home games, Penn State nearly filled that stadium every single home game. Over a hundred thousand people showed up to see them stomp Akron, for God’s sake.
And do you know how much a ticket to a Penn State football game costs?
Forty two dollars. Just to sit in the cheap seats.
You do the math—that’s four and a half million dollars a home game. For six or seven home games, that’s about thirty million dollars.
Sure, sure—there are ten or fifteen thousand student tickets which are cheaper. But there are also luxury sky-boxes which are much, much more expensive. And there are season tickets, which require membership in the Nittany Lion Club and thousands of dollars to reserve. Tens of thousands of dollars.
Then there’s parking, and food, and drinks, and programs. There are all those Penn State hats, and scarfs, and jerseys, and sweatshirts—all of get bought, not because millions of people are insanely fanatical about that Psych 101 course offered in the Forum, but because Penn State had one of the winningest teams in the history of college football.
There’s also that abomination of a Nike swoosh that desecrates the perfectly, pristine and plain blue and white. So Penn State gets some coin from that, as well.
Then, there’s the TV revenue. Again, even last year, as bad as they were, every single one of their games was televised. A couple of them were televised nationally, to our horror, on ABC or ESPN. A few more were televised regionally on ESPN. And the rest were carried locally.
And Penn State made some more coin from that.
Then, also, Penn State joined the Big Ten. So there’s conference revenue sharing. This was a big concern to Penn State in the eighties, when they were an independent, and had one sport—football—that was paying the freight for hundreds of sports teams.
Then, finally, and in part because of their fabulous football tradition, Penn State charges more for its tuition than any other state school in the country.
How much do they make off their football team? It’s impossible to know. Why? Because of a neat trick Penn State likes to pull. It goes like this:
Whenever Penn State wants state funding, they claim to be a land grant university. Whenever the students or some citizen of Pennsylvania wants to know something about Penn State’s finances, Penn State claims to be a private university.
They do it with a straight face, and they get away with it.
So, anyway, that’s an assload of money the fans, the alumni, and the students of Penn State contribute to Penn State for the fun of having a good football team.
And, in return, Penn State pays its players, like all—well, most colleges, nothing to put that team on the field. Free tuition. Room and board.
I think that’s a good deal—for the players. A free college education. But it can’t cost Penn State more than a couple hundred thousand a year. Then there’s maintaining the field—which is done entirely by the students in the turf management program. There’s some costs for maintaining the stadium, for the minimum wage people directing traffic on game day. There’s some insurance. There’s equipment.
And those costs could amount to—what? One tenth of one percent of what the team brings in?
Never mind the fact that going to a decent bowl game, something Penn State hasn’t managed to do since 2002—and that wasn’t even that great—will pay your coaches salary in one game.
Penn State can afford to compete for coaches with NFL teams.
And these clowns are now telling Penn State fans—who have given billions of dollars to the school—that Penn State isn’t willing to spend the kind of money any top rated program is willing to spend on a coach?
Do these fucking idiots really think 108,000 people are going to keep on showing up to see 3-8 and 4-7 teams? Do they think people do that just because its Penn State? Do the initials SMU mean anything to these chuckleheads?
Have they ever been to a Rutgers game???
If Penn State fans were spoiled, with forty years of winning football, then Penn State’s administration has become retarded by it. They’re like late Roman emperors or something. Instead of giving back to the fans and alumni who made Penn State, they intend to provide less and expect more of the same.
What are these guys doing? Trying to get a job in the Bush administration?
Good luck, motherfuckers! When Penn State starts drawing 40,000 to home games, Graham Spanier should have to perform the fucking half time show.
What idiots.
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