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so when I played in the sixties
I had no idea how much money Ara Parsgian made
now retrospectively because I know what the football coach at
Oregon state made
in the early seventies around twenty five thousand dollars I'm guessing that Ara made
you know forty thousand dollars or something it's just a guess we didn't know and it didn't
matter to us it wasn't a factor that was part of our lives today
and of course we have some coaches making over five million dollars and the average
coach in the whole
football bowl subdivision is over one million and the BCS schools you know two million
has become entry level for a coach
so how did that happen you know you know entry level
well entry level at the highest level you pay your dues before you get there
but okay so competition from the NFL has to be one factor 'cause some of these coaches move
back and forth
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although what it takes to be successful in the NFL and in college are completely different things
very few jimmy johnson that's about it guys don't make that transition
very very smoothly either direction for the most part
but but it's not just these market forces out there over which universities have no
control it's the decisions that individual institutions make and so
you know you mentioned amos alonzo stagg you know being hired
at a at a professor's salary back in you know eighteen ninety one you know it was controvercial
at the time one of my favorite stories is
the university of Texas hired dana bible away from nebraska around nineteen thirty six
thirty seven
and in order to do so had to offer him a salary that was more than the President of the university
made
and this was against state law so the
Texas state legislature increased the president's salary by you know a couple thousand or whatever
to to match the seventeen five or whatever the dana bible made
but the the sort of
the beginning
seismic tremor that that rippled out
as far as I know was when Texas A&M signed a guy named jackie sherrill
away from Pittsburgh around nineteen eighty two eighty three
at roughly double the the going rate for a top coach bo schembechler at the time for example
of Michigan was making a hundred
fifty thousand dollars and Texas A&M signed jackie sherrill for close to three hundred thousand
dollars
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and 0:02:23.700,0:02:28.950 what happens as soon as that happens is everybody else that's competing at that level
has to start
you know bumping their salaries to match them
once the head coach is making that much
then you have all the assistants underneath and also you've got an athletic director his goes up you know and actually the head of the NCAA
you know
so there's there's all these ripple effects that just increase the cost enormously
so this was in the early to mid eighties the next sort of landmark case was
Florida state in nineteen ninety five giving bobby bowden the first million-dollar coach
and I can't tell you
how much greater that was from
from the going rate but it was a considerable jump at the time
just within two years Florida you know the bitter rival of Florida state
has to go Florida state one better so they give steve spurrier the first two million
dollars
and so now these things have escalated up to the point where some coaches now
they get hired and they get clauses in their contract's because no coach
negotiates his own contract anymore they all have agents you know just like
you know you know NFL stars do
and so they get these contracts that you know this coach will make the highest salary in
the conference or no less than the second highest salary in the whatever you know
and so you know there's just this you know ratcheting upwards so that we're now over
five million dollars in a couple of cases