3 posts tagged “football”

1,800,000,000.

That is the amount of money generated each year by Division One college football players.

0.

That is the amount of money college football players are paid.

1.

That is the percent of college football players who will go on to play football professionally.

Here is an interesting article, by the always interesting Michael Lewis, examining the question of whether college football players should be paid.

I have several thoughts on the matter.  But first, a question:

Is college football a business?

If the answer is yes, than I think that any right-minded individual would agree that a business should pay its employees.

Okay.  So what about other sports?  Should baseball players be paid?  Softball players?  The rifle team?  Should each athlete receive the same pay check?  If not, how is the pay scale determined?

And what about high school sports?  Don't schools make money off high school football?  Should they be paid?

Which leads me to the heart of the problem (and I speak as a former high school basketball coach).  The problem, ultimately, is that athletics and academics should not be mixed.  It is foolish to mix them, even at the high school level.  They are two completely different things.  Look at Europe, which has a club system (which has its own faults, the biggest being that 15 year-olds drop out of school to play sports full-time.  But hey, it's not like we don't have our own dropout problem).

The club system is not influenced by academics and academics are not influenced by the club system.  Every coach in this country has played against (or fielded) a team which included players who were not academically eligible.  Many teachers can recount stories where they were pressured to change a grade so the star player could play in the big game.  And that is just at the high school level, where most schools don't make a profit.  Although LeBron James' high school certainly made a mint off of him, what with televised games on ESPN.  And how much did ESPN make off of selling advertising blocks during those games?  Or, closer to home, several years ago there was controversy in Jackson over the eligibility of Renardo Sydney, who was attending Piney Woods, a 2A school that plays in the district of Rankin County.  Officially, the coach of Piney Woods was found to have recruited Sydney to play and, thus, Sydney was ineligible.  Unofficially, rumors swirled that the Jackson Public School District (where Sydney would have played) and the Mississippi High School Activities Association (the governing athletic body for Mississippi) did not want to lose out on the revenue that would be generated by having one of the best players in the country play in Jackson (as Monta Ellis, of Lanier High School, had done a few years before.  Lanier ended up moving a bunch of games to Jackson State University so they could sell more tickets ).

At the college level it is a different story, both in terms of preferential treatment and dollars.  Let's just look at the above-the-board money.  At a small school in a mid-major (Southern Miss and Conference USA respectively) college athletics is worth more than $50 million to the town of Hattiesburg, according to this article.   I imagine “OIe Miss” must at least double (and probably triple) that.  So, at the very least, college athletics is worth $100 million a year to the City of Oxford.

And what is the football team alone worth to the University of Mississippi?  The stadium has 60,000 seats.  Say $40 a ticket.  Another $20 per person in concessions.  That is $3.6 million each home game just on tickets and food.  Add in another $11 million each season from television revenue for playing in the SEC.  Apparel.  Donations to the athletic fund.  May be $40 million a year to the university (at the very least).  The entire university athletic budget is $25 million.

If the entire country moved to a club system, and people followed the local club team with as much passion and interest as they do for their college team (England suggests the answer to this question is a yes), then the local town would not see much impact in terms of revenue.  But the university would.  Ah, there’s the rub.  Given the amount of money that is generated each year to a university by athletics (revenue generated because the employees are not paid) why would a university (or an association of universities, i.e., the NCAA) want to give that up?  The answer, of course, is that they would not.  There is no meaningful economic incentive to change that system, regardless of the corruption that invariably comes with it.

Given that we, as a nation, are not moving to a club system any time soon, do I think players should be paid?  Actually, no.  I’ve argued for the last 15 years that all of the money should be taken out of sports, an idea that Lewis covers in his article:

If the N.C.A.A. genuinely wanted to take the money out of college football it’d make the tickets free and broadcast the games on public television and set limits on how much universities could pay head coaches.

That is exactly what I think should happen.  Of course, then CBS would lose out on the billions it generates from advertising revenue...

"There are two types of coaches: those who have been fired and those who will be fired."
Coaching Traditional

The University of Mississippi's Head Football Coach Ed Orgeron and the University of Southern Mississippi's Head Football Coach Jeff Bowers were both fired this weekend.  The Orgeron firing is an understandable mistake.  The Bower firing is, quite simply, mystifying.  Both provide an interesting window into athletic leadership (or, to put it another way, why alumni don’t know shit).

There is a popular phrase that platoon leaders, athletic coaches, and police detectives have used since the dawn of time: Don’t compound one mistake by making another.  In other words, people often make a worse mistake trying to fix a simple one.  The firing of Orgeron, days after a statement of unequivocal support from the university chancellor (Khayat said Orgeron would be back in 2008 "unless something completely insane happens - and I mean like breaking the law or something."), is a perfect example.

Orgeron was hired in the spring of 2005, replacing the fired David Cutcliffe.  At the time, Cutcliffe was the second all-time winningest coach in UM history, in both winning percentage and total wins.  Second all-time.  Furthermore, he was one season away from a 11-3 year, which included the Rebs’ first conference title since 1963, their first New Year’s Day Bowl Game since 1991, and a final ranking of 13, their highest since 1969.  And yet, after a 4-7 season the following year, he was fired.  Since then, Ole Miss has yet to win more than four games.

In hindsight to many (and as I argued at the time) it is clear that firing the second all-time winningest coach in UM history was a mistake.  But now, firing Orgeron (who has gone 3-8, 4-8, 3-9 respectively) is the second mistake trying to fix the first.  Armchair critics and dumbass alumni pick over individual coaching decisions that Orgeron has made in various games as proof that he is not a good coach.  As a former coach (basketball, not football), I can say unequivocally that x’s and o’s play very little into a team’s record (and my biggest strength was probably x’s and o’s).  Maybe 15 per cent of a team’s wins and losses can be attributed to play calling or x’s and o’s.  Much more important is talent.  Good players make good plays.  Don’t believe me.  I’ll give you two New England based examples.

First example is the Boston Celtics.  Last year they finished with the worst record in the league.  Then, through two lopsided trades, the C’s acquired shooting guard Ray Allen, one of the top 10 SG’s in the league, and power forward Kevin Garnett, one of the top five players in the league.  This year, though 12 games, the Celtics have the best record in the league (11-1), the best point differential in the league, the best defense in the league, and the best offense in the league.  They are dominant.  Yet, they have the same coach and they run, basically, the same plays.  What is the difference?  The players who are running those plays.  Good players make for good plays.

Second example is the New England Patriots.  Last year quarterback Tom Brady’s number one wide receiver was Reche Caldwell.  Brady had a good year and the Pats made it all the way to the AFC Championship game but Caldwell was, arguably, the worst number one receiver in the league.  In the offseason, the Pats added Randy Moss, Wes Welker, and Donte Stallworth to the receiving corps.  They cut Caldwell, who is currently racking up DNP’s for the wide receiver challenged Washington Redskins.  This year Brady is on pace to shatter every single season passing record in the league.  He is having, according to John Madden, the greatest year a quarterback has ever had in the history if the NFL.  What happened?  Did they bring in a new coach?  A new offensive coordinator?  Did they drastically redo their playbook?  No, no, and no.  Same coach, same coordinator, same basic playbook.  What is the difference?  The talent of the players running the receiving routes.  Good players make for good plays.

So, what does all this have to do with Coach O?  UM plays in the SEC, year in and year out the best college football conference in the country.  Put another way, the SEC has the most talented college football players in the country.  The problem that UM faces is not one of playcalling, it is one of talent.  We need more.  And when it comes to recruiting talented players Oregeron is, by all accounts, outstanding.  Orgeron was actually doing a great job of addressing UM’s biggest problem: acquiring talented football players.  Don’t compound one mistake with another…

The Bowers’ firing is mystifying.  He’s had 14 straight winning seasons at the University of Southern Mississippi, he’s the winningest coach in Conference USA, he’s the second winninginst coach in USM history, he’s been chosen conference coach of the year a record three times, and he is coming off a winning season.  Short of some scandal that has yet to come out, this is a decision of idiotic proportions.  Bowers has created the best college football program in the state of Mississippi.  Year in and year out they finish with a winning record and go to a bowl game.  Mississippi State and UM won’t play USM for fear of losing.  And yet, he was fired.  Why?  Because some dumbass rich alumni think USM should be doing better.  Here is a quote from Richard Gianni, the AD at USM: "I was concerned about our fan base," said Giannini. "There had been a lot of negativety, a lot of discussion, and I was disappointed with what I saw Saturday."

USM and UM are not teams that are going to contend for a national championship.  They simply don’t have the resources and the facilities to attract enough blue chip football players.  Every decade or two UM might have a year like 2003, where they get close.  USM, with Bowers at the helm, will go to a bowl game virtually every year.  But in the world of college athletics this isn’t enough.

Which leads me to my final point.  Ole Miss should hire Jeff Bowers.  Should hire him in a New York minute.

As Bill Simmons says, "Keyshawn and Chad re-enact the Lincoln-Douglas Debates."