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Comment by vibien | Hacker News Reader

One thing that surprised me is that the highest salaried employees seem to be in Athletics ( https://umsalary.info/numbers.php ). Is it something specific to that particular university or a normal thing in the US universities?

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Athletics typically brings in the most revenue and exposure for a university. I do not agree with these programs being so handsomely rewarded. But it seems most of America disagrees based on college football viewership.

At many schools, the football and/or basketball programs literally fund all other athletics programs...including the scholarships for those other athletes.

Some schools, like LSU, have reported a 100x return or greater on their investment in their football coaches salaries, with respect to increased alumni donations, memorabilia sales, etc.

LSU alum here, and I can confirm that our athletic performance is a rising tide. It's my understanding though that LSU athletics pays employees from its own revenue. So it's not like LSU is diverting funds meant for academics to athletics (in the macro sense). As an alum I frequently get asked to donate to the LSU Foundation which is an entity separate from the Tiger Athletic Foundation, which is where you can donate specifically to the athletic department.

Technically only men's football and men's basketball are usually profitable for universities. Most other sports programs are run at a loss, and funded by football and basketball.

Extremely typical. There are cases where the highest paid employee in an entire _state_ is an athletics coach at a state university.

I was flabbergasted to learn Nick Saban from University of Alabama makes $9.3 million annually(2019)[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Saban

too much or too little?

Too much - universities obviously benefit a lot from the revenue that sports bring in but it'd be nice to see that benefit spread a bit more evenly across professors.

> universities obviously benefit a lot from the revenue that sports bring in but it'd be nice to see that benefit spread a bit more evenly across professors

Professors can't do what he does: bring in big-ticket spending, sponsorships and donations.

This is true - but professors provide the real value that students retain over time - so admissions fees should pretty much all be funneled to them. This is a problem with how hard to market the value professors provide is - a lot of admissions care more about a good sports team than a good set of professors even though the later factor will be much more important to them two years in.

Basically, people don't act rationally so the market is irrational.

> professors provide the real value that students retain over time - so admissions fees should pretty much all be funneled to them

I wouldn't so quickly ignore the additional tuition revenue athletics departments bring in at non-Tier 1 schools.

University athletics are a weird thing. But if the pay bothers you, think of it as a commission. Going cheap on that will likely cost more than it saves.

I think the broader point for the HN crowd is this is a great example of why you want to be part of a profit center instead of a cost center in a business. If it's easy for management to try a direct line from incoming revenue to the work you do (like a sales person or, in this case, a football coach), you are in a great negotiating position. If you are in a cost center, management will do everything possible to reduce your salary, even if it the grand scheme of things that cost center is critical to running the business.

One can also try to work for companies that properly appreciate the value of all necessary components of the business, even if one can't directly tally their contribution. Most important factors to success are not easily measurable.

The irony is that the people who do the central work for the business, academics at the University, engineers designing the next products, even factory workers often are often cost centres. This leads to the somewhat perverse insentive to remove more and more of your central workers to hire managers and administrators.

...or the Athletic Director. Unfortunately that can usually cost the state long after they are gone as the retirement system is usually setup based on final salaries. In the case of the State of Oregon the 3rd highest paid PERS recipient is Mike Belotti who was the head football coach for 13 years and then AD for 2 years. He gets almost $50K/month in retirement. The only two higher recipients are doctors that worked for the state more than twice as long as Belotti.

https://gov.oregonlive.com/pers/

Yea it is pretty common in US universities, coaches are also often the highest paid in the state.

https://moneywise.com/managing-money/employment/the-10-highe...

College athletics are an entertainment industry grafted onto an educational institution. They bring in an enormous amount of revenue, and must employ star power to compete. Star power costs money.

It's best to not think of athletics as part of the university at all, except when they start to lose money and become parasitic.

Normal - a reminder that US Football probably brings in a LOT more money than a soccer club at an german university.

ESPN is doing something like $5B (billion) at maybe $450M per year going forward for the SEC conference? Some parts of that deal are going up 3x+.

https://www.sportico.com/leagues/college-sports/2020/sec-esp...

So it's been going up like crazy. The key thing is to get the athletes paid in my view.

These sports are not your average rec league type pickup games.

That ties into massive fundraising by university that rides the back of these games.

Collegiate athletics, especially at the highest division (which University of Michigan is in), can be lucrative revenue streams, particularly in football/basketball; top positions within are compensated nicely.

The basketball or (American) football coach will be the most highly compensated individual at most tier 1 athletics schools

I found a similar website for a different university a few weeks ago and have been shocked by the same thing. Some of the people had total compensation listed at over $3 million which is a completely insane number if you're not from the US.

In universities with teaching hospitals, it's common for doctors or medical directors within the hospital to be very well-compensated (>$1M/year, say).

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