As coaching salaries skyrocket, players fight for rights
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Dec. 12—When Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly crossed the $100 million-plus threshold paid to college football coaches earlier this month, it raised eyebrows across the college sports landscape.
Riley's deal to leave Oklahoma and take a reported 10-year, $110 million contract at USC and Kelly's deal to leave Notre Dame for LSU for 10 years and $100 million show the multi-billion dollar college sports industry remains flush with cash, even after pandemic losses in 2020.
There was also a brushback among college athletes who continue to fight for economic justice. Recent gains in cost of attendance added to scholarships and Name, Image and Likeness rights have put some additional money in athletes' pockets, but an imbalance remains.
Ray Shipman, the 2008 Florida Mr. Basketball, played college sports in an era before NIL and cost of attendance. Shipman, who began his career playing basketball at Florida and ended it playing football at Central Florida, now works closely with college and high school athletes in the sports medicine field in his native Miami. He still has lingering effects from an injury he suffered playing football.
"That was only playing a half a season," Shipman said. "For coaches to be paid that much, it's baffling. I do believe that players should get a little piece of the pie. How much? I don't know, but it's an opportunity to set them up for the rest of their lives."
Riley and Kelly weren't the only coaches to cash in during the recent coaching carousel. Mel Tucker signed a 10-year, $95 million extension to remain at Michigan State, while James Franklin inked a 10-year, $75 million deal to stay at Penn State. Mario Cristobal left Oregon for Miami for a reported five-year, $40 million deal, with funds provided in part through Miami's medical school and health systems, which have generated billions in profits.
To B. David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University, the escalating coaching salaries are an example of misguided priorities. Ridpath has spent decades studying intercollegiate athletic administration and ethics pertaining to NCAA legislation and enforcement.
"Coaches are not worth the money they are being paid, period, the end because there's not the market," Ripdath said. "This is just what people are paying because they think it's going to help them win, but the fact of the matter is if the labor was paid, there would be a market correction, and that would correct the salaries."
The solution? Ridpath suggests a narrow antitrust exemption to control costs in college sports, which was proposed by the Drake Group, an organization dedicated to protecting academic integrity within the college sports landscape.
"If you have a library that is falling apart, like LSU apparently does, and you are able to go out and rustle up millions upon millions to pay somebody not to coach and then millions upon millions to pay somebody to coach, I think we have to ask ourselves what the priorities are," Ridpath said.
Ripdath noted LSU, as a land grant institution, brings in billions more in research dollars compared to the athletic department budget.
"The old excuse of when is the last time you've seen 80,000 people show up to watch a chemistry experiment? Candidly, I've never seen that," Ridpath said. "But that chemistry experiment might save 80,000 people."
The NCAA adopted an interim NIL policy last July, after several states adopted NIL legislation that superseded the NCAA's authority. Some big-time college players have cashed in. Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, a Heisman finalist, has reportedly made close to $800,000 on endorsement deals. But the average NIL compensation for a Division I athlete as of November stood at $391 per deal.
Former Indiana basketball player Charlie Miller, who played for the Hoosiers from 1994-98, said he always found it curious his head coach, Bob Knight, could sign endorsement deals for basketballs and shoes, while his No. 3 jersey without his name was sold at the student union without receiving compensation.
"It's catching up," Miller said. "I think it's only fair if a player's name, image and likeness is that great, why not let them get a percentage of what comes in? Because that doesn't guarantee they are going to make it at the next level, playing professional sports, but to me that's probably a way to kick off your life — where you don't have to worry about chasing glamour or glitz."
The latest round of coaching changes among the college ranks has sparked a national debate about the trend of the current model, where Power Five college football coaches are generating salaries equal to and sometimes even surpassing that of their professional counterparts.
"Coaching salaries have absolutely ballooned over the past decade," sports attorney Darren Heitner said. "It's a combination of programs earning more money, whether or not they wish to report it as such and whether or not they wish to report a profit at all and just a further emphasis on the programs, the facilities, the coaches and the lack of having to pay the players."
The ballooning salaries aren't exclusive to head coaches.
According to USA Today and its yearly coaches' compensation review, assistant coaches in college football's most prestigious conferences pulled in salaries that nearly rivaled those of the lowest-paid head coaches in the NFL.
Before his departure last week to become the head football coach at Oklahoma, former Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables in July received a new extension paying him $2.5 million. Texas A&M defensive coordinator Mike Elko just finished the second year of a three-year deal that nets him $2.1 million.
"I think without any purpose or even ability to play the players and share in the revenues that (coaches) receive, coaches will continue to demand more money, and that's particularly true I think as we as a society experience inflation and a weakening of the dollar," Heitner said.
While the financial possibilities for Power Five head coaches and assistants are endless as long as the universities and boosters can continue to find the money for compensation, the same can't be said for student-athletes. Some have used the recent wave of high-dollar college coaching contracts as the opportunity to lobby for student-athletes to be compensated.
Heitner said it's not a matter that can be determined by the NCAA or college conferences.
"It would be up to individual states and-or the federal government to really intervene and require that monies be shared or for athletes to organize and be classified as employees and unionize and bargain for actual salaries," Heitner said.
Collective bargaining is an avenue college athletes can use in their push to be viewed as employees of the university and thus be entitled to compensation for their time and talents. In September, National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo sent out a memo which "updated guidance regarding her position that certain Players at Academic Institutions (sometimes referred to as student-athletes) are employees under the National Labor Relations Act and, as such, are afforded all statutory protections. Though the NCAA attempts to limit practice hours to 20 hours per week, often, with meetings and travel, college athletes often put in 30 to 40 hours of time during a season."
"I know that the general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board somewhat recently penned an opinion that suggests she's very much of the belief that college athletes should be and actually are employees and have been misclassified as not being employees, and that she would likely support any efforts for athletes to organize and perhaps collectively bargain," Heitner said.