That ranks the salaries of playoff participants from 2016. It wasn't that long ago either when you factor the pandemic was in between. The MAC salaries haven't accelerated in that time frame. The median salary for a playoff program was 195k-200k. The median of an average FCS program was likely than 150k-175k. 350k is twice that of 175k.

Any of them are good enough to take the Bobcats to a bowl. High school coaches can be reasonably hit or miss. Then you are talking in some cases converted arm chair quarterbacks. College its a profession and to get a head coaching job a guy has to know what he's doing in almost all cases. That is balanced against coaching graveyards where anyone would fail.

My econ 101 class talked about free markets and letting that market dictate prices. I'm not seeing many presidents/deans/professors crying about their pay compared to a football coach. Are deans jumping ship and heading to other schools that don't have football because those schools pay them more? Highly doubtful and it seems to me the markets are working properly.

And I'll add, the pay is probably very even if we were to pay these different professions hourly.

+1

Try going to your boss and demand you make more than him/her, especially when you don’t make a profit. Talk about central planning. You must get some school pride to say your Alma mater’s coach makes big coin. Why not give the coach a base of 350k, with incentives if he makes and wins a bowl, wins the MAC, and increases attendance and the program shows a profit. Especially if we go to the Rose Bowl instead of the Swanky’s Bowl. Many of you think all that will happen if we get the right guy and pay a lot of money anyway.

In a free market, if you spend more than you have coming in the door and don't make a profit, you go out of business. The "market salary" for coaches has no basis in economic reality. It's like you own a company that loses money, yet you pay yourself a big salary. Only your parents are floating you.

I also have my union card and am retired with OPERS benefits and Medicare. I can do that part-time gig for $40,000. Let the bidding begin. This is the free marker in action! ;-)

Nope. Scholarship even to public school clocks in around 25k/year and many places much more. If you don't see the value in that scholarship, then you shouldn't be playing college football anyway.

You own a company where all your employees make 25k and you pull in 8M. That’s a free market.

You continue to retreat to this inadequate answer and off the mark example, while you ignore the elephant in the room. If you just look at dollars, Ohio loses what, $20m a year on sports? Why do they bother? Do they just like losing money for the fun of it? Or, do they play sports because they feel that a successful sports program benefits the University in other ways? If the only thing that matters is cutting the amount the University spends on sports, slashing all the coaches to half their free market price saves peanuts compared to the very large amounts that could be saved by dropping to Division III, or to club level.

That leaves an obvious question, which you continue to ignore. Why doesn't the University do the obvious thing, and drop football entirely, or at least drop to Division III? There is only one plausible answer, and that is that the University believes that football is operating at a net profit, when it includes other benefits such as attracting students, marketing the University, building closer ties with the town, and building closer ties to alums, who in turn end up making contributions to the general fund. If the University believes it is making a net profit, your whole argument goes out the window.

Once you factor in other benefits, it seems your comparison to a company that loses money is far off the mark. Let's try a different example. Take a company that manufactures products for the space program (at a loss) and related products for consumers (at a profit). Since the division that makes things for the space program operates at a loss, why don't they close the division, or slash the pay below market value for those involved? Maybe they view the participation in the space program as something that raises their prestige in the eyes of consumers, and thus it boosts sales and market prices for it's consumer products, and thus that division is a net positive contributor to the business as a whole, even though it loses money when viewed on it's own?

When it comes to why Ohio has a sports program at all, there are only two possible answers. I opt for the view that they view the sports programs as having additional benefits for the University. It would seem that you view them as simply stupid, yet oddly, you don't seem to favor eliminating sports entirely, nor taking them down to Division III, where there would be very, very significant savings.

As far as the question of whether coaches salaries are currently set by the free market, of course they are. It is also true that the free market for coaches salaries may be distorted by the lack of pay for players. In time the impact of that will work it's way out of the system, and there may be new standards for pay. Whether the free market makes coaches pay go up or down, Ohio should adjust theirs accordingly. If the NFL is any guide, players in the NFL are well paid, but so are coaches. I make no predictions as to what will happen in the future, of than to say that it is possible salaries will change, but it is also possible that they will not.

You continue to claim to believe that attendance is not affected by coaching. The facts tell a different story. Attendance numbers for games in November are impossible to compare to years prior to 2005 because those games are now on weekdays, while before that they were on Saturday, so the only comparisons can be done for games up to October. There are few, if any, attendance stats for Peden prior to 1999. I have attendance at the Utah State game in 1994 as 5940, but I believe that was in very bad weather, and not typical.

In Grobe's final year, attendance averaged 19,978 for games prior to November. That rose in Knorr's first year to 22,190, but then fell sharply and for the last three of his years it averaged 17,030. It rose with the arrival of Solich to 20,065. Off the field issues caused a drop in attendance back to the 17,000 level for 2006-8, but strong performance caused attendance to rise from 19,700 in 2009 to 20,980 in 2010, to 21,925 in 2011 to an average of 23400 between 2012 and 2016. A drop in football attendance nationwide followed that, causing a drop for a few years, but in Albin's first year the average was back to 20,024, and in his second year, 19,514.

So, it appears that there is a bump for a new coach's first year, after which the attendance rises or falls based on results by +/-3000 or so. That can be a difference of 6000 between bad expectations and results, and good expectations and results. A few more years like 2021, and attendance could be back to 17,000. A few more years like last year, and attendance could be back to 23,000. Which will we get? Does it matter?

Me thinks you over-simplify the rise and fall of attendance figures. Different ADs counted attendance differently. When we sat near each other for years, Jeff and I had a running attendance guessing game. We got pretty good at it often predicting the reporting number with figures less than 100 off. Then we had an AD change and we couldn't get within thousands of the reported numbers. BTC and I know exactly how many seats are in both the Convo and Peden and to a trained eye, we can pretty much tell you how many folks are in the house. Our average reported football attendance is way off because at least two games a year are lucky to have 8,000 in the house.

The number of actual manufactured seats I've counted is 21,600. The mound was supposed to be 24,000 and now I'm seeing 28,000 on Wikipedia as I guess they've reopened the band stand in the endzone for seating.

Given that crowds in Peden can surge well north of 21,600 it would make sense to upgrade the student section with another 4,000 seats, videoboards, concessions. Better egress for safety. Make Peden into one of the more impressive stadiums in the MAC if done right.