Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
1/13/2021 3:00 PM
Did anyone ever think that maybe the schools in the MAC, Sun Belt, MWC and CUSA don't ever expect to win a national championship? They could have different aspirations. Football is so much different than basketball. Football doesn't have a league tournament at the end of the regular season where a team that ended up 10th in the league standings can get a seat in the NCAA tournament. The regular season is much more important in football. In basketball all teams have a second chance at the end of the regular season, no matter how poor your record is. That is what makes March Madness so fun to watch. It could be those conferences above are striving to win as many games as possible and be successful in a bowl game. Nothing wrong with that formula.
I'm fine with this as the formula until you make your football coach the highest paid university employee. As soon as you do that, the formula you lay out makes no sense at all because you've found yourself in the worst possible situation. You're dumping money into something with a very low probability of return, and you're not even competing at a level that excites your alumni (which leads to donations) or fan base (which leads to revenue).
If the goal's essentially rah rah go team, play for the love of the game, amateurism is pure, that's all well and good. But you don't need to pay your football coach 2x the salary of the University President to do that. And paying your coach that much begs the question as to why you are, and what you're trying to achieve.