Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Coach Mike Anderson is cashing in his “fastest 40 minutes of basketball” program for one of the fastest $40,000 paychecks in college basketball.
It will take him slightly less than a week to earn that much now that the taxpayer-funded University of Arkansas has outbid the taxpayer-funded University of Missouri for Anderson’s considerable ability to coach “amateur student-athletes” in service of the noble academic mission of a great institution, for a mere $2.2 million annually.
Anderson did a spectacular job at Missouri, rescuing a program from disarray and probation in the wake of predecessor Quin Snyder’s 2006 meltdown. He won roughly two-thirds of his games (111-56) and made three straight trips to the NCAA tournament (including the Elite Eight in 2009).
Anderson was even at better at playing the economic game of big-time college athletics. With the same negotiating skill that previously landed him raises and lengthy contract extensions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and at Missouri, Anderson played his dream destination (Arkansas) against the place he repeatedly promised not to leave (Missouri) right until the bittersweet end.
That would be bitter for Missouri and sweet for Arkansas.
All that will be long forgotten by the time they suit up for the 2011-12 basketball season. Anderson’s legacy at Mizzou will be as stellar as it at UAB. He’s one of the best in the business.
But Anderson’s other legacy—along with that of his fellow top-tier coaches in basketball and football—is one of pure, unadulterated sophism. The nefarious finances of intercollegiate athletics should be required study—at athletic department expense—at every university if America that has as much as single course in economics.
This is a multi-billion industry built upon one simple, unbending principle: The athletes are subject to a strict salary cap that limits their compensation to the cost of tuition and room-and-board at their respective institutions.
If athletes were compensated upon their market value, the house of cards would collapse. But with the salary cap firmly in place, there’s much largesse for the coaches and everyone else associated with the system.
This is all about college for the students. But it is all about the free market for the coaching fraternity, which—with the blessing of educators, boosters, and most of the sports media—can share vast wealth in compensation that is made possible by the salary cap for “student athletes.”
It’s all justified by an unchallenged article of faith: Athletic departments are separate, self-supporting economic entities that have nothing to do with the academic side of the institutions with which they are aligned. That is, unless you count the tax deductibility of contributions to those departments or the fact that they glue themselves to the schools and their academic “missions” whenever it’s beneficial to do so.
If, for example, Missouri’s Athletic Department has nothing to do with the university—and, by extension, the taxpayers—then why does the Board of Curators (a state-appointed, state-governed entity) involve itself in the hiring, firing, and compensation of coaches such as Anderson?
Yes, under the current sweetheart system, a convenient firewall exists between athletic departments and the universities they presumably serve (and for the loyalty to whom the athletic departments reap billions). But there’s nothing legally preventing the universities from collectively changing the rules to rein in these fiefdoms so that they actually serve educational missions.
If the NCAA can decree sanctimoniously that no “student-athlete” receive pocket change from a coach, booster, or anyone else associated with a university, then why can’t it place some limitations on the compensation of coaches, athletic directors, and others employed in this industry?
Why is it all about education for the students and free enterprise for everyone else? Ask any coach like Anderson whether it’s more important to win or build character in young men, and you know the schmaltzy answer you’ll receive about truth, justice, and the American way.
But if you’re sad as a Mizzou booster that Anderson’s team didn’t reach the Sweet Sixteen this season, consider how he must feel: He would have received a bonus of $50,000 for making the Sweet 16, $100,000 for the Elite Eight, $150,000 for the Final Four, and $350,000 for the national championship game.
And the players? Why, they’d get free travel to the games.
The problem isn’t greed on the part of Anderson and company. No one can blame them for exercising their rights in the free market.
The problem is that intercollegiate athletics should either be a free market for all, or a restricted educational environment for all. A national salary cap for coaches and other employees would achieve that aim and return hundreds of millions of dollars to serve the noble mission to which coaches give such glowing lip service.
It would also prevent bidding wars among competing institutions—public and private—for the services of men like Anderson.
There’s no chance of any of this happening in our lifetimes—the coaching fraternity is far too strong politically to allow for so much as a consideration of a change in the status quo—but Anderson’s situation just brings the subject to mind.
Now let’s return to the real world. Be true to your school.
Rah rah.
