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athletic support by eli cranor


Athletic Support: Multi-million-dollar buyouts don’t make sense
eli.cranor@gmail.com
January17, 2021


Eli Cranor is a former professional quarterback and coach turned award-winning author. Please use the “Contact” page at elicranor.com to send in questions for “Athletic Support.”


Dear Athletic Support: I’m a huge college football fan. With all the COVID stuff, this was by far the weirdest season I can remember. The quiet stadiums. The coaches in masks. Cancelled games. The list goes on and on. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the massive amount of money universities still pay their head football coaches. I’m an alumni of a large college in my state. I can’t begin to tell you how many letters I received this years, asking for me to donate money to help keep the athletic program going. My university even ended up cutting a few sports to stay afloat. This smells like a big fat lie to me, seeing as how they’re still paying our football coach all his money. To make matters worse, other schools are paying to fire their coaches! These multi-million dollar buyouts are ridiculous, especially right now. Our country is hurting. People are waiting for their stimulus checks. But college football coaches are making millions, even after they get canned! Are our priorities as a country way off, or I am I just crazy?

— Buy Me Out


Dear Buy Me Out: You’re not crazy. Things are definitely off at the upper-echelon of college football. There’s no reason at all for coaches to make that much money. So how does it happen?

Football programs have become the front porch to American universities. What I mean is that they’re the shiny stuff, the window dressing, that serves as a recruitment tool for the rest of the school.

Think about the amount of TV/commercial time a university with a high-powered football team will get over the course of one season. That’s why these coaches are making such crazy salaries.

How does it happen, though? Especially when universities are supposedly in dire financial conditions as a result of COVID?

Boosters. I’m talking big-money guys who don’t mind paying ten million out of their own pockets to get an old coach out and a new one in.

Prime-time college athletics is a multi-billion-dollar business. And a lot of that money comes from private donors. Yes, it is sickening to think there are millions of dollars being spent to fire college football coaches while the rest of America fights over toilet paper and prays for $600 stimulus checks.

But that’s just the way it is.

The chances of coaches’ salaries going down anytime soon is unlikely. The best we can hope for—and I have heard talk of this—is the end of buyouts.

I’m not actually sure how this would happen, as it would take a restructuring of all the FBS coaches’ contracts at exactly the same time. But if it does happen, I think college football will be better off for it.


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If you end up purchasing this book for your children or grandchildren, I only have one final suggestion — ask them to read it while standing up!

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"Eli Cranor has an almost unbeatable advantage. He can remember how it felt to think like a twelve-year-old and he can see the very same events like the adult he is. Don't try to resist this book!"
- Jack Butler, Pulitzer-Prize nominated author
 



















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