“Way over Paid” Mack Brown

After some bad headlines I want to set the record straight and voice some of my opinions. The Daily Texan's headline read 'Mack Brown gets $2.5 million dollar raise'. That is not accurate and this may seem tedious but I think that is very misleading. He received a raise and NOW his salary is $2.5 million. Getting a $300,000 raise to increase your salary from $2.2 million to $2.5 million is much different then getting a $2.5 million dollar raise. If that were the case he would now make $4.7 million and he would be the highest paid coach at the college level.

Which brings me to my next point. Mack Brown should be the highest paid coach at this level. Why is he not? Many people read that headline and negative thoughts go through their head. They think state funds and tuition are being wasted which is a misnomer I will talk about later. Mack Brown is now, with his new raise, the 3rd highest paid coach in the country. Yet over the past nine years he is the winningest coach in the game. He incorporates the fans into this program like no coach I have seen before and as a result Texas has soldout every football game for the 8 years he has been here. Texas' athletic department, dominated by football, brings in more revenue than any other school. Revenue from merchandising is now also tops in the country and this year Texas is on pace to set the record. The winning football program boosts the morale of the entire school. After the 2005 Rose Bowl win President Faulkner credited the record number of student applications to the football team's success. Yet people still flinch when make he gets a $0.3 million raise.

Now to address the issue of athletic funding. I did not understand how this worked until it was explained to me 3 years ago. Texas' Athletic Department is it's own entity from a financial standpoint seperate from the school. At the time, I would assume this still to be true, Texas was one of only three schools with an athletic department that funded itself. The athletic department receives zero funding from the school, it is totally self sufficient. Now within the department football made all the money. Men's basketball does slightly better than break-even. The other 14 school sponsored NCAA sports- Baseball, Softball, Women's Basketball, Rowing, Soccer, Volleyball, Men's and Women's Golf, Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving, Men's and Women's Track and Field, and Men's and Women's Tennis lose money for the department. Now I am not ragging on those sports, thats perfectly fine if this is how its going to work. The total revenue for the department was over $80 million at the time and I bet its way higher than that now. So doesn't it make sense that we compensate? He wins, he turned on the cash flow, and he took the beating from the media.

I often make the same argument when people bitch about high schools building these huge new sports complexes and paying high school coaches $100,000. If they're set up to make money for the school then it's just an investment. And actually its better because if they make money from their sports then that lessons the draw on taxes. Personally I would rather buy a ticket or a hat and have a portion of that go towards school financing then just have the government take that money out of my paycheck.

-hj