2008 College Football Coaches Salaries

Big Ten's Delany among four commissioners paid $1 million

The board chairmen of the ACC , SEC and Big 12 were all said by aides to be unavailable for interviews.

The conferences, which oversee a host of college sports besides football, operate as 501(c)(3) charitable organizations, meaning their operations are tax-exempt. The compensation is generally set by boards of directors made up of the member schools' presidents and chancellors.

The six conferences, all of which receive automatic bids to Bowl Championship Series games, are among 11 that make up college football's highest level. The other five don't receive automatic bids and receive smaller bowl payouts from the BCS , although those payments have increased in recent years as overall BCS revenue has grown.

Those five conferences — Mountain West, Mid-American, Sun Belt , Conference USA and the Western Athletic Conference — all paid their commissioners less than $600,000 in 2009. But they also brought in far less in total revenue — between $9 million and $50 million, compared to $102 million to $244 million for the six core BCS conferences, the tax records show.

AP's review also found that Slive, the SEC commissioner, received a $1 million bonus in 2008, nearly doubling his pay that year to $2.1 million. SEC spokesman Charles Bloom said that bonus was for two TV deals the SEC negotiated that year, with ESPN and CBS.

Beebe, the Big 12 commissioner, got the biggest pay raise from 2008 to 2009. His $997,000 was more than 50 percent higher than his 2008 pay of $661,000. Big 12 spokesman Bob Burda said the conference board of directors raised Beebe's pay to put him on par with the other conferences that receive automatic BCS bids.

Dave Czesniuk, senior associate director at Northeastern University's Sport in Society, argued that the figures reflect the over-commercialization of college sports.

"I can't imagine that the well-being and growth of student-athletes is of paramount importance when there's that level of compensation," he said, when told of the commissioners' pay. As for Slive's bonus, Czesniuk said, "Let's be real about what's being rewarded. You can't say that it's about the student-athlete experience."

The million-dollar paydays for the commissioners still lag far behind some of the nation's top football college coaches. Texas coach Mack Brown , for instance, makes around $5 million, while Alabama coach Nick Saban earns $4.7 million. Still, the revelations could help fuel a revived movement to pay players, many of whom get athletic scholarships to cover tuition, fees, room, board and books, but not a slice of the revenues.

Cash Rules Everything Around Malzahn | Slow States

So let’s see. The Big Ten rakes in as much revenue as any other conference. Its schools sit in states that were never that great at producing football talent and that situation has gotten worse as population has continued to head south. Nevertheless, Big Ten schools don’t spend their lucre on the coaches who would allow them to make up for their lack of proximity to talent. Are Big Ten fans so stupidly loyal that they will watch whatever mediocre product the Big Ten Network chooses to show? Do Big Ten fans overlook the fact that the conference has fallen so far behind the SEC because they can tell themselves that schools in the South oversign and pay their players? There is a perfectly legal way to spend money to improve the product on the field and the schools in the conference refuse to take it. Is the Big Ten a conference of Pittsburgh Pirates?

Granted, I ran these numbers back in 2008 , but this is parochial nonsense to a rather large degree, isn’t it? It’s another example of how Ohio State’s high-profile failings against the SEC have tarnished the conference’s reputation at large, further perpetuating the Southern Speed myth (although the name of this site isn’t helping, we know). It’s extrapolation to a silly degree.

The SEC plays the best football in the country right now, while the Big Ten’s power programs are in various stages of rebooting. I think reasonable people can collectively reach that conclusion, but it’s certainly not because a few schools moronically overpay for Steve Kragthorpe and Charlie Weis.

(“Never that great at producing football talent”? Seriously?)

“Are Big Ten fans so stupidly loyal…”

Counterpoint: Are SEC fans actually alumni?

Now, I know that this isn’t the point of the post, but there is a big difference between being a fan and an alumnus/alumna. I’m loyal to Penn State because I went to the university, LIVED PENN STATE FOOTBALL and the other things being a Penn State student entailed. I root for the Nittany Lions because I’m a Penn Stater. That’s a big difference than being somebody who just watches the games on Saturday. Going to a football school made me realize that following the NFL was just a vicarious experience.

For example, I figured the person who poisoned the trees at Auburn was a fan who never went to Bama. Crimson Tide alumni may “hate” Tiger alumni, but they understand that there are lines that aren’t crossed.

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