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Parity in College Football
- Thread starter The Alabaster Yak
- Start date
Considering the average salary for an NFL player in 1984 was ~$150k/year, it would appear that they've done pretty well for themselves over the past 35 years.
Are you suggesting that NFL players, with their collective bargaining agreements, would be better off if there was more competition? I mean, the players have access to all of the owner's revenue data, and are agreeing to a salary structure via collective bargaining that they believe is fair. If they don't like it, they don't have to participate. THAT is Capitalism.
Additionally, we've had the USFL, XFL, etc. and discovered their product didn't simply didn't appeal to the consumers. Those leagues shuttering their doors is a direct result of Capitalism.
Honestly, I don't agree that a salary cap for coaches would be a great idea, but I have absolutely no idea where you're going with this argument. I'm pretty sure you don't know where you're going with it either.
He sees something that in a vacuum looks like a Commie idea, and the true American Patriot fire in him gets lit
Was thinking the same. Seems like the kind of person who is confused why the definition of Communism doesn't specifically mention pinko business owners who require their customers to wear pants.
SerenityBuff
Well-Known Member
SerenityBuff
Well-Known Member
This option isn't feasible and I'm sure Klatt knows that. I would be, however, interested in hearing some realistic ideas for increasing parity in CFB. This Bama, tOSU, Clemson rotation can't be good for the game. We're already seeing attendance drop around the country, for a variety of reasons. So what can the conferences actually do to ensure that their respective schools become and/or remain competitive?
- get rid of the playoffs and refocus team, university and fan attention on winning the conference
- contract the P5 conferences to restore regional tie-ins within the same recruiting grounds and eject the schools who aren't committed to funding their ADs at the same level as conference peers
- reduce number of scholarships
Wealth is always relative.
My wife is from Peru, we have friends from multiple other third world countries. Poverty and wealth looks different depending on where you are.
As a point of reference a single person in the US who is at the US poverty line is among the wealthiest 16% of people in the world.
When measured one way: dollars/day.
I think that if you don't include how much food, shelter and clothing that those dollars can buy, you're missing important context.
In economic-statistician speak, income/day really should be corrected for purchasing power parity before one makes the comparison that you're making.
And, bringing us back to the topic at hand: purchasing power parity would be a useful metric for ensuring that any college football coaches' salary cap would result in some level of parity. As many people note: $1MM goes a hell of a lot further in Oxford, Mississippi than it does in Palo Alto.
I'd like to see the Alliance push for equity with TV deals. Rather than attacking the problem from the basis of restricting money spent by programs, try to more evenly divide the money, viewership, and casual interest fans have across the board. Anecdotally, I find myself watching unranked Big10 and SEC games every Saturday and I'm sure it adds to my perception that those are the best conferences and teams. I don't believe it is coincidence that the Pac12's drop in prestige corresponds with the creation of the Pac12 network.
SerenityBuff
Well-Known Member
I love these ideas. For decades, especially in the Pac-10/12, winning your conference and playing in the Rose Bowl was everything. Now it's an afterthought with the hyper focus on the playoff. Hypothetically, let's say Oregon finishes #5 this year, just missing the playoff. They would feel cheated and the Rose Bowl would be a consolation prize. How ****ed up is that?
Also, for the second point, instead of a salary cap on coaches, institute a spending minimum on programs. If you don't meet the minimum, you're "relegated" so to speak. I like that too.
Certainly purchasing power and in conjunction actual style or manner of living does have to be factored in.
Roughly half of the worlds 7 billion people live on the equivalent of $2 a day or less, in much of the developed world that would almost be impossible.
Unfortunately while many have tried economist haven't really come up with an unbiased and satisfactory way to accurately measure and compare with these factors built in.
The comparison though does still stand. For much of the world what we often consider poverty would be looked at as great abundance.
And yes coming back to the topic at hand you are absolutely correct. An assistant coach in many SEC cities making $125,000 a year would be living a good lifestyle. As you mentioned in Palo Alto he may not be able to find and afford adequate housing at that rate. At $300,000 in Norman Oklahoma he is putting away substantial savings for retirement, in Seattle he is doing well but certainly not seeing a large surplus in the budget.
There would also be some real questions about who would participate at the designated cap and what that cap should be.
Schools in conferences like the B1G, SEC, and even the PAC12 may look at a figure of say $10 million as being far too restrictive in light of their revenues.
At the same time many G5 schools would say anything over $5 million would be a burden on their budgets and put them at a competitive disadvantage considering their revenues.
As stated by others a salary or other spending cap only works if you have an effective revenue sharing system and in college football I don't ever see the big revenue schools agreeing to that. The schools that bring in over $100 million per year in revenues are not in any way interested in splitting that money up and sharing it with schools struggling to bring in $15-20 million a year.
Instead of a salary cap on coaches, I would be in favor of a limit on football staff (non-academic assistance) to cull the number of analysts and quality control folks, but bump the number of coaches by 2 and allow a non-coach recruiting coordinator to do on the road recruiting. So you would get 1 head coach, 3 coordinators (O,D,ST), 4 offensive staff members, and 4 defensive staff members. 4 GA's (can coach on field during practice and games) and 4 QC's (can't be on field during practice and can only be in the booth on games) plus 4 S&C coaches. Allow up to 5 non-coaching administrative roles. Limit of 5 on the recruiting staff including the non-coach recruiting coordinator.
BlackNGold
Club Member
Yeah, lets select the National Champion by a poll consisting of either sportswriters or other coaches who have no bias. After listening to people complain for decades about football not deciding the championship on the field, now we are suppose to go back to a flawed model.
I just wonder who is actually calling for parity? It seems to be the fans of schools who cannot compete.
Don't like that particular idea. I'd be more in favor of expanding playoffs to 8 and restructuring TV deals. Every power 5 conference gets a bid like every other sport and sec teams wouldn't make double what PAC 12 schools make in a year.
I'm perfectly good without any sort of NC. I'm advocating to put the focus back on conference championships.
I think the NC should be given to the school with the highest score after adding all of the votes from the polling services divided by the amount of money each team spent on football that season. The highest score would be the team that did the most with the least. That's winning football!!
Cap shouldn't be avg of that many. More like NFL franchise tag math: avg of current Top 5. Then have an annual cap increase.
Actually, it would be great to take it the whole way with college coaches: they should unionize and there should be standard terms that are the same for everyone. Be a good way to force a split of the FBS into the power schools which can afford the union contract terms and everyone else.
Elite players want to go to high performing successful programs. There won’t be parity in P5 college football until half of the 4 star and 5 star recruits fall out of bed some morning and say “My Top 5 are Vanderbilt, Rutgers, Kansas, South Carolina, and Arizona!” Annually…..then substitute further bottom feeders.
The parity in the NFL partly comes from the fact that players can’t choose where they’re going to play for the first 4, and in some cases 5, years.
The high salaries of the top coaches are more often the results of success rather than the initial causes of success. Right?
This thread is puzzling.
The parity in the NFL partly comes from the fact that players can’t choose where they’re going to play for the first 4, and in some cases 5, years.
The high salaries of the top coaches are more often the results of success rather than the initial causes of success. Right?
This thread is puzzling.
And college teams should stop being feeder teams for a professional league. No other sport does that or enjoys such a large and free labor development league.
Not sure how that would happen. There is not a secondary parallel world of amateur football.
That’s part of why the NFL has parity; the worst teams getting first crack at the best players, but the biggest reason is absolutely the salary cap and revenue share. Not being able to retain all the talent you draft and have for 4/5 years is the biggest detriment to sustained success.
As for CFB coaching salaries, instituting a cap would force Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, etc to prioritize assistants and let others walk. Instead of Bama paying their OLB or TE coach like the same as CU pays their OC (possible hyperbole, I haven’t looked this up), they’d have to let someone else pay that guy.
I honestly don't think the most important difference between the haves and have nots is the size of the coaches' salaries.
The big difference is in the size of their staffs. All those "analysts" are doing real work. Work that either does not get done at other programs or work that adds to (or takes away from) the actual coaches' work.
And it goes beyond just game planning and film work. You think they're not helping to evaluate recruits? Or calling, texting, etc their hs coaching contacts?
Even outside of the football stuff, how much travel support (everything from booking (and rebooking when things inevitably get ****ed up) to filing the correct reimbursement forms, etc) do you think the ACs get at a place like Bama vs say CU?
The coaches salary pool is not, imo, where the majority of the difference can be found.
For sure. Actual reform to create parity would require much more, particularly at this point
It's also a road map to what CU needs to do to compete.
This is why it is /was so demoralizing to watch RG and LC dismantle the organization that Mel started to build.
I remember one of the big selling points to hiring MT in the first place was that he would bring Saban's and Smart's org charts with him.
Build out the organization the same way the best in the business do it, and all at once the universe of coaches that can succeed in that organization grows well beyond the "once in a lifetime" hire that we're still searching for 25 years later.
But nope, toss that out too. Let's do it the old school CU Buff way!
C'mon, dude. With the caveat that the value of an asset is different than a salary, it's nowhere near comparable.
This article says that the average NFL salary in 1984 was $162,000 including pro-rated signing bonuses. Just considering inflation (and nothing else)- that works out to $431K in 2021 dollars. According to this article, the average salary today is $2.8M, representing ~6.5X increase over inflation.
With that said, that number is greatly skewed by mega-contracts in the NFL- in 1984 the biggest contract was Warren Moon's $6M over 5 years (AAV of $1.2M). Today it's Patrick Mahomes $45M/year- this is up 14X over inflation.
This skew shows up in the difference in median salaries- this article says that the median salary was $130K in 1984 ($346K in 2021 dollars), whereas it's $860K today, meaning a 2.5X increase over inflation.
So- NFL players have increased their salaries somewhere between 2.5X and 14X over inflation.
$78M in 1984 dollars is $207M in today's dollars. If that $4B valuation is correct, it's a 19X increase over inflation. Even the highest-compensated players, who have reaped a disproportionate benefit from salary increases since 1984, have not done nearly as well as the owners