Payday
Here’s a statistic that should be a bit concerning. Research shows that the highest-paid public employee in each of the 50 states works for a college or university.
You might say given the prestige of certain teaching hospitals and medical schools, that could make sense.
Now let me point out that in 39 of the 50 states, that highest-paid public employee is a coach of a college athletics team. In other words, it’s far easier to count the states where the highest-paid public employee is NOT a coach.
In five of those remaining eleven, a college president earns the highest salary, while in one a law school dean draws top dollar; a med school person is the highest-paid in the remaining five.
So again, in 39 of the 50 states, the highest-paid public employee is a coach. In 12 of them, it’s a basketball coach…in 26, it’s a football coach—that includes Iowa. Meanwhile, Minnesota has a tie—a football coach and a basketball coach share the crown of top-paid public employee in the state.
As if that all wasn’t bad enough, those crunching the numbers add that in many states, the second-highest-paid public employee is a former coach, who is still under contract and getting paid after being fired.
I could make a statement about college sports playing a disproportionately important role in society. But I don’t have to, the numbers already made the point.
But there’s this—in an era of college athletes getting endorsements and checks from school foundations to encourage them to play at one school over another, how long will it be that the highest-paid public employee in a state…is a student athlete?
