Notre Dame football seeks new highly paid coach
The biggest news in the Catholic world today has nothing to do with bishops or women religious but football. Notre Dame announced that it fired its coach, Charlie Weis, five years into a ten-year contract.
Now I love college football, but it disturbs me how big of a money game it is. If you can't produce a winning record, away you go. Big donors don't give to big losers. Meanwhile Weis will continue to get paid big bucks, thanks to his lengthy contract, and ND will search for yet another big-bucks coach.
I wonder what ND feared more: the threat of lost donations due to the Obama incident or the threat of lost donations due to the sorry state of their football program.
This is a topic rarely addressed when discussing how "Catholic" schools are, but clearly our money isn't following our priorities. It simply a reality, though, if Catholic schools want to compete with other universities--and not just on the playing field.
I'm not saying Catholic universities shouldn't have top-notched sports programs. Sports are a great part of the college experience and ND football in particular adds a lot to American Catholic culture (though I personally couldn't care less how they do, being a fan of the Maize and Blue rather than the Blue and Gold).
Still it'd be nice if coachs' compensation could reflect our values at institutions of higher education, whether Catholic and not.
Comments (4)
Wake up Notre Dame
By David (not verified) on Friday, December 4, 2009Bring back Lou Holtz, and give him a four year contract so that he has time to bring in great recruits. Also bring back Skip Holtz to take over after the four years; which will help entice Lou to come back. As you know, he would bring in a top defensive coordinator to fix the mess. The AD, and the rest should keep their mouth shut and let him run the program.
Holtz on pay
By Megan Sweas on Tuesday, December 1, 2009If you're interested in Notre Dame football, I recommend listening to this interview with Lou Holtz from a few weeks ago on ESPN radio (starts about 18 minutes). About 25 minutes in he jokes how he was paid $135,000 when he was at ND and there were no contracts that guaranteed that he'd be paid for five more years. Things have changed and I can't imagine they'll ever go back!
To listen to the podcast, visit this page and scroll down to ESPN 1000, Chicago, with the Podcast from Waddle and Silvy: http://search.espn.go.com/lou-holtz-on-weis/.
This article also gives an interesting picture of how college football has changed over the years: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4691655
Hope and change
By Al (not verified) on Tuesday, December 1, 2009Let's hope that Fr Jenkins does a better job of "fixing" the football program than he did with his handling of President Obama. At one point, ND was having trouble keeping up with the big boys in college football because of their standards for football players. Don't know if that is still the case. A coach can only do so much but I would rather see the college put the college education ahead of getting the next Heisman Trophy winner.
Economics of College Football and Vocations
By Jerry D (not verified) on Monday, November 30, 2009It should make us happy that college football brings in big money as a successful football program funds other sports programs such as women's water polo.
A successful football coach is not going to take a job at the salary of a social worker to make a social statement.
It's not fair that trivial jobs such as being a motion picture star is rewarded vastly more that a dedicated journalist who informs us about important social matters, but the economy and liberty would suffer greatly if a centralized authority decided what is fair.
We can look at any career as a way to serve the Lord. Those who apply themselves succesfully in highly paid but trivial pursuits can give back through generous giving to those in need.
