Penn State

It was said to see the students of Penn State riot because their football coach was fired for failure to do the right thing when he was informed that a 10 year old boy was raped by his assistant coach. The students by rioting validate the reasoning that was used by all of the university officials, who have since been let go, that the football team and the image of the university was more important than stopping criminal activity. Big time college football gets a pass on crime as it is. It simply mystifies me how a large amount of the student body could come out in support of this type of criminal behavior. Contrary to what the goal of the administrators and coaches to limit damage to the football team and the university the investigation and the subsequent "protests" have caused irreparable harm to the university. The university will now be remembered as the school where football is king and that the law doesn't matter as long as there is a winning season. Instead of protesting the firing of a high paid (look at what professors who actually teach earn) football coach they should have been in the streets celebrating that firing and working to shield the school's academic programs.

All Big Ten universities survive on federal research grant money not football, however at Penn State they may have to start living on their football revenues. The federal government is investigating whether laws were broken and the penalty will be the loss of those federal dollars. We are talking potentially millions and that will be the true damage to the university.

Finally, the crime has got to hurt recruiting of the non-athlete, non-fan because the university has shown that football is number one and that they don't care about their students, potential students, or the greater community.

Overpaid?

I know that I wrote about this in March but once again we are having this discussion. It began when the Wisconsin State Journal about the CEO salaries of the health insurers in Madison. Then there were the overpaid teachers in New Berlin. Finally in today's Capitol Times Paul Fanlund was writing about the high cost of UW Football games without mentioning that the coach makes somewhere around $1 million and his assistants are in the 6 figure range. This may not seem related but they are. Teachers making around $50-60,000, CEO's of companies with revenues in the $100+ million, public employees making about what the teachers make, the chancellor of UW Madison making $400,000 all are overpaid. But, CEO's of other companies the same size as the health insurers earning 10 times more and football coaches making more than twice the chancellor and far more than a full professor are not overpaid. Some argue that it is related to how people are paid. This does not appear to be the case, coaches are paid with public money just like other public employees. It would appear that we don't like people that we have to deal with frequently earning more money than they do. But even that isn't the case because there currently is no outrage over doctor's salaries and lawyer's salaries. In fact being a lawyer is now considered more honorable than being a teacher or public employee (except a big time sports coach) and lawyers used to be the most hated profession. It would appear that the problem is just with those who are considered the stereotypical public employees and they are just not making that much money.