College Coaching Salaries: On the Decline?
If you are a college football coach and you have a sports agent, you are undoubtedly hoping that college coaching salaries continue to escalate. Unfortunately for the coach and sports agent, I think too many factors are working to force salaries into a downward trend.
In major college sports, it turns out that the entire “game” is deemed a not-for-profit. A recently published report about the University of Texas explains how college sports are considered to be big business, but still remain tax free:
Over the years, the NCAA and other college sports supporters have convinced the Internal Revenue Service that athletics are a genuine part of the educational experience. Yet big college athletic programs also have become more business-minded as their costs have risen. On average, the Congressional Budget Office found that about two-thirds of the athletics revenue at large universities comes from activities such as sales of tickets, TV rights, advertising and merchandise that would be taxed if the schools were ordinary businesses.
The uproar has resulted as people have realized that college sports may be getting a free ride. While changes in this realm may not necessarily impact professional athletes right away, it could result in lesser salaries for coaches as college sports programs are forced to start paying more tax. As head coach salaries have escalated, I have always thought that the market was due for a correction at some point in the coming decade. This movement to potentially strip college sports programs of their non-profit status is yet another sign that coaching salaries will eventually come back down to earth.
