outside view

On Monday night the Governor outlined his plans for shaving almost a half billion dollars off of the state budget.

The proposed cuts cross almost every department of state government.  2011 state employees will lose their jobs. The 45,000 that remain will not get pay raises. 

That is unless you happen to be one of the four highest paid state employees in Tennessee. If your name is Calipari, Fulmer, Summitt, or Pearl, you don’t have to worry about silly things like salary freezes. University of Memphis basketball coach John Calipari recently was given in the neighborhood of a $1 million raise.  Vol football coach Phil Fulmer was rewarded with a nice little annual pay increase. Raises for UT basketball coaches Bruce Pearl and Pat Summitt have not been announced yet but you can expect them to be six figures. 

Although some who have posted comments on the newspaper’s website in recent weeks may take exception, I’m a fairly intelligent guy and I understand the need to pay these state employees a competitive salary.

If U of M doesn’t want to ante up, schools would line up to pay Calipari $2.5 million per year. Fulmer, Summitt and Pearl could command higher salaries on the open market as well. If we want high-profile coaches and successful athletic programs in this state, we have to be willing to pay.

But still, the question begs to be asked: Is it right for a state school to give a basketball coach a $1 million raise while giving the professors in the classroom no raises and increasing tuition by double digits?

Don’t blame the coaches. They deserve to be paid a fair salary based upon the marketplace. That is the American way isn’t it? There is some comfort in knowing the taxpayers aren’t paying these coaches’ salaries. Still, it is a bit of a PR problem for the schools.

There is a larger question. Is it right to pay college coaches such ridiculous salaries in the first place? Sure, the salaries are market driven but what do these salaries say about our values? We have coaches making in excess of $2 million per year. Compare that to the average annual salary of a schoolteacher in Tennessee which is $43,815. The comparison would be just as out of balance if we were looking at salaries for police officers and firemen who risk their lives everyday and receive little in compensation.

Do coaches deserve to make ten times more than the governor?

The funny thing is Calipari, Fulmer, Summitt, and Pearl would all be coaching if they were making $500,000 per year. The same is true for most coaches across the country. Most will tell you they do it for the love of the game. Ironically, if the coaches weren’t making megabucks, everyone would probably be happier. There might not be quite the same amount of pressure on the coaches to win championships. Ticket prices might be a little more reasonable. Students wouldn’t have to start paying for tickets to go to UT football games. We may actually still think of college athletics as a student activity rather than big business.

But to quote an unknown philosopher, “It is what it is.” I always scratched my head at that one but it says it all in this case. We’ve misplaced our values and astronomical salaries for coaches are here to stay. We’ll say we are grateful to our teachers for preparing our kids for the future. We’ll say policemen and firemen are our heroes. But we won’t put our money where our mouth is. 

We’ll pay the big bucks to the guys who win football and basketball games and trust the true public servants will scrape by somehow. No one ever said we have to treat all state employees alike