College football throws thousands around, but not to athletes

What’s worse than a major college football team having a defensive coordinator who makes more than $650,000 a year?

Having two defensive coordinators making more than $650,000 a year.

That’s not a bad joke; it’s a bad reality at the University of Washington, where fired defensive coordinator Nick Holt will be paid this year for doing nothing and new defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox will be paid even more for doing Holt’s old job.

Sound bizarre? You just don’t understand “the marketplace.” Those who run college sports tell us that if big teams like the UW want the best coaches, they must not only pay top dollar, they have to offer guaranteed, multi-year contracts.

But this column isn’t really about the excesses of college sports. It’s about fairness. While major college football programs are paying head coaches $2 million a year, paying assistant coaches up to $700,000 and guaranteeing that money even if they are fired, they have a much different standard for the athletes.

Until last month, NCAA rules prohibited colleges from guaranteeing scholarships for more than one year. As such, too many students see their scholarships canceled before they have a chance to earn a degree for no better reason than they were injured, didn’t play well enough or the coach wanted to use the scholarship on a new player.

If anything resembling a marketplace were in play, the top players could have demanded more. They might have insisted on a four-year guaranteed scholarship and a stipend in addition to tuition, room and board.

But the same organizations that cite the marketplace to cover their own excesses have created rules that thwart the marketplace when it comes to the 18-to-22 year olds.

Former UW President Mark Emmert promised reforms when he quit to become president of the cartel known as the NCAA. And within a year, he delivered two that would be considered minor in nearly any other setting.

Emmert succeeded in getting his board of college presidents to allow – not require – colleges to offer multiyear scholarships. He also won approval of a rule to allow schools to grant some student-athletes a relatively small stipend: $2,000 a year.

I know this is where the traditionalists say that such a payment would violate the ideal of amateurism. But such an ideal, if it ever existed, was born in an era before $2 million coaches, before luxury suites at college stadiums, before multimillion-dollar TV contracts, before ridiculous athletic schedules that make being a student an afterthought, before it became clear how few student-athletes actually win a degree.

For a student with parents even on the lower edges of the middle class, having spending money isn’t a problem. Being able to go to a movie, rent a video game or eat in a restaurant sometimes is well within the means of their parents. For many others who come from desperate financial circumstances, that isn’t possible.

Now, however, even Emmert’s modest reforms are under assault from the universities that make up the NCAA. Seventy-five have officially protested the multiyear scholarship rule, while 151 have protested the $2,000 stipend.

The stipend rule is suspended, and the scholarship rule must be reviewed by the board when it meets Saturday in Indianapolis. If they don’t back down, the rules go to a vote of the 338 Division I universities.

Emmert is confident he will prevail. But the fact it is even being contested is disappointing.

I was ready to point out the irony of the UW paying an assistant coach $650,000 not to work because he had a multiyear contract while denying some kid $2,000 and a multiyear scholarship. But the UW supports both rule changes. So does Washington State University. (Eastern Washington objects to both.)

“It’s the right thing to do,” WSU President Elson Floyd told me last week. “Think of all the revenues coming in from the new TV contract. These are the right policies.”

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657 peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com blog:thenewstribune.com/politics