When is a coach’s pay too much?

I had a near-death experience earlier this year. I got on the elevator where I live wearing a Louisiana State University sweatshirt. It was given me when I left teaching there about 25 years ago, but It’s still in pretty good shape and I like the purple color.

I didn’t know that our women’s basketball team was playing LSU for the NCAA championship. Two women on the elevator, peered at my chest for a silent moment. Then, they politely questioned my loyalty, my intelligence and, I felt, my future. I thought I heard them say something about Benedict Arnold as they left.

They were headed to a gathering of fans. If the fire alarm had sounded at tipoff, no one in the audience would have fled until halftime. If the game had been close, they might not have left even then.

Hawkeye sports teams are more than a bonding force for very different people here. Retired professors, lawyers, doctors and nurses, stay-at-home moms. They care with a passion I don’t share or quite understand. Here’s a bit of why.

I see our football team as semipro, a training ground for the NFL. The players aren’t all Iowans, but people recruited from around the country. Football income, including from the sale of $8.50 beer, $9.50 for premium, is in the tens of millions of dollars. In theory and maybe in fact, no tax dollars are spent on sports. But a university is not a commercial enterprise. It is a place dedicated to learning, not entertaining. Faculty are paid well, but not excessively. A tenured professor of history or chemistry or art may make close to $300,000 a year.

Base pay is $136,56. The university president earns $650,000. The Governor is paid (I didn’t say earned) $130,000.

But they are all pikers compared to the highest paid employee in the entire state. Kirk Ferentz, our football coach, makes $7 million a year. Why do I care what he is paid? I think paying a coach 15 times what the president of the University gets is wrong. Paying him what we spend for the entire history department is wrong. It elevates sweat over study. Ferentz’s top assistant makes $1.3 million. After an 18 percent raise over the previous year. (The women’s basketball coach, Lisa Bluder, who almost got me throttled, makes a paltry $1.3 million including salary and outside payments). It is true that their salaries come entirely from ticket income and beer profits. Kirk is not banking your tax money or mine.

He has spent many years of his life here, earning awards as coach of the year, as he has led the Hawkeyes to 186 wins, a lot more than he has lost. This year the team will bring about $40 million to the school and great excitement to people like my cheering mates. That is not to be dismissed. It is our history. Back in the 1950s when I was cheering the Golden Gophers a book titled “The Bitch Goddess Sport” was published. Nothing much has changed.

I think the Constitution ought to be amended to include college athletics. “No coach shall be paid more that the college president where he or she coaches.” That would make me a happy athletic supporter.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.