By Richard Pryor III
Executive Staff
This week, I’ve been thinking (which is always a dangerous prospect for me) about what to write on for this article. But the day before writing it, something happened – Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide lost to Louisiana State.
Saban, who has been the head coach at Alabama since 2007, has, since 2008, never lost more than 3 games in a season. He hasn’t had a season with multiple regular-season losses since 2014. And this man makes around seven hundred thousand dollars a year, which makes him the highest-paid public employee in the country, according to The Alabaman. According to a 2013 infographic for Deadspin (by the way, RIP Deadspin and Jim Spanfeller is a herb), a football or basketball coach was the highest-paid public employee in 39 out of 50 states.
This is a fact that makes me uncomfortable because I am the son of a public employee – a professor at a state school. No one in her department makes anywhere near what Saban does, even though I would argue that what she does is at least equally as important as what he does.
What is the message that the infographic sends? That sports are more important than academics? That you wish to pay more to win at college football than to lead a medical school or Research I University?
I’ve talked with my mom about grad schools recently, as I discern what my next path will be. When we were discussing one of the schools I might want to attend, she told me something along the lines of “you might not want to go there, considering how badly the legislature has treated them.” This shouldn’t be a conversation parents are having with their kids. The report on Sewanee Football