College Football is Big Business

Pity the college football coach. With all those talented student-athletes, how much energy and time should he spend on the student versus the athlete?

For any coach at the 120 universities playing big-time football, the choice is easy if he does what the school’s contract rewards.Contracts specify “performance-based” bonuses, and so we examined coaches’ contracts to answer the question: How do football coaches’ rewards for winning games, attending to the athlete, compare with their rewards for advancing the student toward graduation? There’s no contest.

No one is surprised when a corporation talks about its devotion to the social good but then pays its CEO bonuses for raising profits. Likewise, it should be no surprise that despite talk about education, coaches are paid to win games. But it may be surprising how clear the contracts are in specifying what it takes for a coach to get bonuses.