Filling out those tourney brackets? Remember that your winnings (and all gambling winnings) are taxable! #TwitterTaxTip
(For more on twitter tax tips, see my prior explanatory post.)
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Penn State University has released the official salary of Joe Paterno and the news is BIG. Really BIG.
And why? Because it’s… get this… $512,664.
No missing digits here.
The provost at the University of Alabama should be weeping by now. And the folks at the University of South Carolina should demand a refund from Spurrier (if, for no other reason, than the fact that their team sucks this year – sorry, Rob!).
Now, I’m not sure what other kind of compensation JoePa gets. But I don’t care. Before I moved to Pennsylvania, I thought that Penn State was a motor oil (long story, I’m from ACC country). But I have much admiration for the positive press that Joe Paterno has brought to the university – for a mere half million a year.
Yes, it’s a lot for coaching, relatively speaking. But it pales in comparison to the monster coaching salaries at other universities.
Maybe Paterno and the rest of the Nittany Lions actually remember that the “U” stands for university. As in education. And not training camp for pro ball.
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Psst, if you enjoyed this article, can you digg it? Click below:
digg_url = ‘http://www.digg.com/football/JoePa_s_salary_made_public’;
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No, that’s not a typo. These days, it seems, it is all about the dollars. Even in college sports – or maybe especially in college sports.
The headline on this week’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday Edition, blared “Raising Funds – and eyebrows” – the story about the push to raise money for colleges through athletics made the front page. It seems especially fitting to run the story during football season (and maybe just a little self-serving that it focused on Temple and Penn State Universities less than a week before the well-known Nittany Lions pick on the Owls in Philadelphia) but it’s hardly news. The role of the dollar in college sports has been under fire for more than a year now, from the IRS inquiry into whether the tax-exempt status of colleges should remain considering the “empires” that have been built on the backs of taxpayers to the controversial salaries paid to coaches to Congress’ debate about the role of sports in secondary education – including basketball. What has come out of this debate is largely nothing – a lot of drama on both sides about the value (or not) of sports programs at colleges and universities. While there should be pressure to answer this debate in a very public way, there isn’t. Perhaps it’s impolitic to do it with football play-offs looming in the distance – too many OSU fans in Congress (yes, that’s OSU pictured above)? And then there’s basketball… And then, baseball. It’s just so darned inconvenient. Only Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has dared bring it up again recently; he promised last month to take another look at whether tax-exempt status was appropriate – but then, who are we kidding? He went to the University of Northern Iowa.
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NCAA President Myles Brand has (finally) responded to the ongoing inquiry into the tax-exempt status of the organization in a 25 page letter posted on the organization’s web site. The response initially had an October deadline – I guess somebody forgot to tell the folks in Committee that it’s college football season. You can’t expect a serious debate about academics in the middle of football season, and just as basketball is gearing up the school semester.
It’s worth noting that the first three pages of the letter don’t address the tax-exempt status question at all. Much of the rest attempts to link "life lessons learned" in sports to the educational purpose of NCAA athletics. This should give everyone in Committee a chuckle.
You see, other than the occasional athletic superstar, the economics (and make no mistake about it, economics is really what we’re talking about here) of college athletics and treatment afforded those who participate (coaches included) do not mirror real life. In real life, no one pays you millions and billions of dollars to watch you do your job. You don’t get lavish perks for showing up to work. And perhaps, most telling in the tax world, you don’t get a pass on your taxes because the institution you work for happens to do some good along the way…
Mr. Brand argues, however, that the U.S. Supreme Court has already sanctioned the college sports tradition in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma 468 U.S. 85 (1984), when the Court opined:
“The NCAA plays a critical role in the maintenance of a revered tradition of amateurism in college sports. There can be no question but that it needs ample latitude to play that role, or that the preservation of the student-athlete in higher education adds richness and diversity to intercollegiate athletics and is entirely consistent with the goals of the Sherman Act.”
And in theory, that makes a lot of sense. And maybe in 1984, it made a lot more sense. That was before the NCAA started collecting billions on lucrative television packages. Before coaches were paid millions of dollars and treated like royalty. Before alums were squeezed for extra dollars to score highly desirable game tickets. Before companies like Nike started paying to have their logo plastered all over the uniforms of college athletes. Before college sports began to be merely a stop along the way to professional sports. In that regard, "the revered tradition of amateurism in sports" really doesn’t exist at all.
And what about those outrageously high college coach salaries? Brand claims they’re not high at all. In fact, he writes that "coaches’ compensation packages, especially those with seven-figure packages, include institutional salaries commensurate with other highly paid and highly recruited faculty and staff." Someone should tell that to the president of Duke University; as previously posted, Coach Krzyzewski is the highest-paid employee at Duke University, with a salary nearly nearly three times as much as Duke’s president. The idea that these salaries are commensurate with other "highly paid and highly recruited faculty and staff" is highly amusing – unless, of course, Brand was referring to other coaches.
He spends much of the remainder of the letter touting how the $7.8 billion budget for NCAA (yes, with a b) really, really helps the students who are not participating in sports achieve. I’ll bet that makes those students thankful for the $74,000 of expenses attributable to football players per year and the staggering $158,000 of expenses attributable to men’s basketball players per year. It’s especially appalling when you consider that the average cost of expenses for a student athlete is $39,000 per year. I guess that means the lacrosse and wrestling teams cost, what, $5 a person?
You can practically feel the desperation.
Brand wraps up, more or less, with this unbelievable statement: The ability of the NCAA to influence spending is limited. So their argument is what, exactly? That they have created a monster that they can’t control? That college sports has become Frankenstein? And for that, they should be rewarded?
Don’t get me wrong. I love college sports. I love Duke basketball, back from the days when Jay Bilas, Mark Alarie and Johnny Dawkins played. I watch college football on television; I was one of those millions of folks who tuned in to watch Ohio State play Michigan. But you know what? I watch it for entertainment. And those millions of other folks who watch? For entertainment. At the end of the day, we’re watching a game – a game that makes a whole lot of money for a whole lot of people. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I just happen to believe it’s not a tax exempt purpose.
A spokesman for the Committee said lawmakers did not plan to comment yet on the response.
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