If you haven't been living under a rock inside a submarine at the bottom of the sea on the planet Snarflax, you've probably heard about this recession thing we've got going on. If you're on the bottom of one of this planet's oceans you've probably added heaping side dishes of financial crisis, jobless recovery, and DOOM to your buzzword checklists. Either that or you're a college football coach:

Between 2006 and 2009, the average pay for a head football coach at the NCAA's 99 big-time public schools rose 46% to $1.4 million.

That's from USA Today's annual survey of college coaches' salaries, and it comes with the requisite muttering about priorities. This is U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

"But at a time of declining revenues and declining financial aid, the coaches are up 46%? In the insular world of high-stakes, very competitive sports, that might make sense. But if you talk to an average parent or an average 16- or 17-year-old and give them those facts, they'd have a hard time understanding why that's the priority."

With state budgets increasingly pressed by pension obligations, collapsing tax revenue, and the constitutional requirement to remain balanced, higher education spending is being cut dramatically. For instance, a slammed Michigan State University is dropping almost a sixth of their degree programs. In this sort of environment, spending money on collegiate athletics isn't likely to make a profit in the long run – the USA Today article cites a study that shows every one dollar invested in athletics brings one dollar back-is becoming an untenable situation.

Even a powerful institution like California is facing harsh choices. Their athletics programs have been in the red since forever, and that day is coming to an end soon:

"This is meant to be a come-to-Jesus moment for athletics, in which (the department) realizes that it needs to make difficult choices to stay within a sustainable level of resources," said law professor and panelist Christopher Kutz, chairman of UC Berkeley's Academic Senate of tenured instructors.

Cal is supplying the athletic department with $6 million to $8 million a year these days, along with millions of dollars in "loans" that are then forgiven years later when it becomes clear the athletic department can't possibly pay them back. Though slicing teams has not been broached officially, it's not hard to read between the lines:

"We have 27 teams," said panelist Kutz, the law professor. "It's not the highest number, but it's fairly high. I think MIT has more. I'd guess about 23 is about average."

And four teams on campus feel a chill go up their spine. Men's golf, which somehow breaks even at Cal, is not amongst them. Everything else that isn't football or basketball should be jumpy. MIT is a Division III school that isn't paying their coaches six, let alone seven, figures. They're not relevant. "Average" is relevant.

If schools are going to get athletic budgets in line, and it looks like they won't have a choice in the matter, the only way to do it is cutting programs. Even if a program like Cal wanted to get rid of Jeff Tedford and replace him with an amiable local high school coach, they're still on the hook for a massive buyout. That massive buyout would then crush ticket sales and donations, leaving Cal even further behind than they already are. It's not really anyone's fault-raise your hand if you've turned down a million dollars-but the escalating arms race in college sports has left a lot of schools with no choice but to start hacking. Without a Christmas miracle, the programs in the middle ranges of the Directors’ Cup, where athletic departments compete as a whole, are going to be dodging axes over the next few years.

(H/T to Doctor Saturday)

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