Successful Excess: Fleecing the Willing

College football kicked off this weekend and there was a huge, early season matchup between the Texas Longhorns, ranked #1, and the Ohio State Buckeyes, who are the defending national champions and ranked #3.

In big games like this, poll numbers mean nothing. Pre-game predictions are pointless, the endless talk of pundits and know-it-alls means nothing. Friends and fans with all their biased, slanted opinions are so many passages of wasted breath.

What it really comes down to is… I don’t know, I’m not a sports fan at all. But there are inescapable facts, numbers that, while disturbing, don’t lie.

Ohio State Coach Ryan Day makes, according to reports, twelve and half million dollars a year. Steve Sarkisian, coach of the Texas Longhorns has to live on a paltry ten million and eight hundred thousand in a season. Poor guy.

Between the two of them, the pay day for the game in Ohio Stadium is 1,941,666.67.

Of course, we all realize they don’t just work for a few hours on Saturday, they have a job to do all week. Toiling under the weight of fan expectations from August until the end of November, and if misadventure is kind they will have to suffer through until January. There is additional compensation for those games.

That is just the head coach salary. It doesn’t include the NIL money paid to student/athletes, or the pay doled out to assistant coaches, stadium staff, the medical staff, and sundry other employees.

When you factor in the ticket costs, ranging from $313.00 to $1,372.00 each, at last check, for the Ohio State versus Texas game, which means an average ticket price of $842.50. Currently, Ohio Stadium seats 102,870 loyal fans, making it the 4^th largest on campus stadium in the US. This means, based on simple, incomplete math, I realize there are variables and different ways to figure averages, there was $86,616,540 spent on tickets to the game. It doesn’t matter that a percentage of that money went to agents and resellers, not the university. It isn’t really about accountability, just cost.

If you tune into the game, or shell out the cash for a ticket, you’ll see people adorned in game jerseys (between $20.00 and $185.00 depending on authenticity), sweatshirts, team shirts, logos emblazoned with pride on their pants. They’ll be wearing hats and visors, scarfs, bandanas, neckerchiefs and a few dapper souls will walk the stadium steps in Ohio State dresses, or button-down oxfords and ties.

Stadium fare includes pizza, nachos, loaded macaroni and cheese, beer, specialty cocktails, a land of excess, a glutton’s dream, for a price. For a family of four, to buy tickets, maybe grab some swag, have a few drinks and something to eat they would lay out more than $1200.00, possibly up to $5000.00. You need to be a real fan.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter who won. Both teams played as hard as they could and their fans were feverish and vocal, and one team had to lose. With the expanded playoff format offered by the bloated, and opulent Bowl Championship Series a loss to a highly ranked team this early in the season, is only a blemish. A two loss Ohio State team won the championship last year, the first year of the expanded playoff despite losing the final game of the season, and not being a conference champion.

Making it into the Bowl Championship Series is like a license to print money. They hand it out in buckets. Schools and conferences rake in huge paydays. Coaches are handed huge bonuses. Everybody comes out ahead. Except for the fan, who scrapes up enough money to buy a ticket, pay plane fair, rent a motel room, buy food, drinks and possibly some official, university approved clothing to prove they were there.

Money isn’t the root of all evil, but chasing it has become a national obsession. In universities with successful medical and research facilities, where the nation’s youth learn the things required to move the country forward, coaches are normally the highest paid employees.

And here is the most bizarre constant of the whole equation, coaches are hired to win games, and with a little luck, championships, but contracts don’t reflect a win/loss standard of success. Perhaps it seems to tawdry, or crass to put what everybody expects, even demands, into writing. If they don’t win enough games schools need to manufacture an excuse to fire them, shaming the coach and themselves in the process. It might be better than paying out the remainder of the contract, a crippling blow to the budget, because you can’t just wait until the last coach is off the payroll to find another potential millionaire to accept the generosity of the Board of Regents, or whoever’s in charge of the purse strings.

Football season is just starting, excitement builds, sweeping fan bases along on a reckless journey, through fall, and into the winter, if you’re lucky. Each week is another chance to celebrate the enormous investment involved in fielding a team. Enjoy it, don’t think about the sacrifices required to make it happen. It is a lot more fun if you ignore the price.

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Nheyob on Wikimedia Public Domain

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