Paying for Not Playing

Illinois coach Ron Zook was fired Sunday after winning the first six games of the season and then losing the next six games. The last game was an embarrassing loss to Minnesota. The price of his failure? A whopping $2.6 million. Paid to him!

Zook was 34-51 in seven seasons with the Illini. He will be paid $2.6 million in a buyout, according to his contract.

This wasn't the first time Zook was fired for poor performance, only to walk away with a boatload of money. In 2004 the University of Florida fired Zook after only two years. He was paid $450,000 for each remaining year on the contract. That's almost 10 times the average American's salary, for having done a terrible coaching job.

Zook is not the only coach to get a contract like this. Jerry Kill recently signed a contract with the University of Minnesota for $1.1 million a year, with a $600,000 payout for each "unfulfilled season" (that's doublespeak for getting canned). In late October, when the contract was signed, the U of M had so far won only a single game under his leadership. The Gophers are currently 3-9 overall. One of Kill's three wins came Sunday over Zook's Illini, the game that was the last straw for Zook.

These are public taxpayer-financed institutions paying inflated wages for dismal failure. Supporters argue that the coaches deserve outrageously high pay because the football programs are such moneymakers. But most programs don't actually make a profit, though they do bring in TV money and alumni donations are often driven by football.

Paying football coaches high salaries might be a reasonable argument if salaries were based on success. But coaches like Kill will still get millions of dollars if they're fired after one season. Kill's contract guarantees that he will make between $4.2 and $7.7 million over the next seven years.

Salaries are supposed to provide an incentive for performance. Coaches like Zook have shown that money simply doesn't work as an incentive. Yet universities continue to pay these outrageous salaries because wealthy alumni in the good old boys club demand these men be hired at these exorbitant rates.

This myth of entitlement pervades American society at the highest levels. When men like these reach the lofty pinnacle of head football coach or CEO of a corporation, they and their adulators think they deserve to paid handsomely regardless of how poorly they actually do their jobs. They get golden parachutes and non-fulfillment clauses that guarantee they'll never have to work another day in their life. So how can money be any kind of motivating factor for them?

The average Division I-A football coach earns more than a million dollars a year, when you include bonuses, benefits, housing allowances and the lavish perks. By comparison the president of the United States makes $400,000 annually.

College football coaches should be paid $150-200K a year, which would be in line with the highest paid university professors. But a million bucks a year for a football coach at a public university is ridiculous. A million bucks a year for a losing football coach is obscene.

What's truly disgusting is that the players these men coach are amateurs who are prohibited from receiving any kind of monetary compensation. Yes, some of the players will go on to play professional football and make millions. But the majority will never make a nickel off the game after four years in the college football meatgrinder. Ten percent of college football players will suffer brain injuries, while thousands every year suffer serious knee, back, neck and head injuries that will hamper them the rest of their lives.