The Madness of College Football Coach Salaries
Your Governor is likely not the highest paid public employee in your state.
There are extraordinarily demanding professions that require years of dedicated study and immensely benefit society.
Then there are football coaches.
I love college football. When I was growing up in Mississippi, my dad and I spent a lot of time going to games at the rickety Mississippi Memorial Stadium in Jackson. It was within walking distance of our house, and I still remember the intense excitement of hearing the pre-game band and crowd grow louder and louder as we got closer to the stadium.
When my dad turned 95 in 2013, we spent the fall football season going to all of the Ole Miss games. I wrote a book about it, The Last Season: A Father, A Son and a Lifetime of College Football.
In 28 states, the highest-paid public employee is a university football coach. For another dozen, the highest paid is a basketball coach, but let’s stick to a serious sport that is uniquely American in its embrace of violence, not that silly stuff of athletes running around in shorts who are penalized if they touch another player.
In my home state of Mississippi, the newly departed Ole Miss football coach, Lane Kiffin, was paid the annual per capita income of a Mississippian …. every day. This is a state in which geophagia is still a public health concern. On the off chance you might not be familiar with the condition, geophagia is the intentional eating of clay or earth to stave off hunger.
This is grotesque.