We’ll keep this pretty brief today. (It’s a rant!)
This weekend, two more NCAA Power Five Schools’ head football coaches were fired: Karl Dorrell (University of Colorado) and Paul Chryst (University of Wisconsin). That brings the total this season (in Week 5!) to five head coaches.
It’s supposed to be intercollegiate athletics, right? Student-athletes and all that, right?
Then why do the head coaches get blown out less-than-halfway through the season when they’re responsible for bringing these student-athletes to your college campus? It’s their mess, correct? Then let them deal with it and, if nothing else, hurt their ability to ever coach again.
And, more importantly, why the obscene amount of money that is being spent by universities (or well-heeled boosters) in buy outs to the recently departed?
Chryst is due close to $16.5 million and Dorrell $8.7 million. The other three, led by Scott Frost (Nebraska) $15 million, Geoff Collins (Georgia Tech) $11.3 million, and Herm Edwards (Arizona State) $9.4 million. That’s approximately $60 million in dead money that won’t go to lowering tuition, making campus life more affordable, improving the dining hall service, equalizing the offerings for male and female student-athletes.
You name it.
It’s money that’s simply p!$$ed away because football wins and losses matter so gosh awful much at these universities that the college’s leadership cannot stand one more moment with these individuals on their campuses.
It’s discouraging enough that either the college football or basketball coach is the highest paid state employee in 39 states (per this 2018 ESPN piece) but when ex-coaches are also populating those lists its even more infuriating.
It needs to end.