The Advocate. December 20, 2021.
Editorial: A busybody Yankee congressman should not take on LSU coach Brian Kelly
A publicity-seeking congressional busybody from Paterson, New Jersey, has written a letter to LSU’s new president challenging the tax-exempt status of a university that’s spending $100 million on a football coach.
“Dear President Tate,” wrote Bill Pascrell, who is entering his 25th year in Congress, in a letter to William F. Tate IV on Dec. 17. It came after the congressman apparently read about LSU’s luring Notre Dame’s Brian Kelly to Baton Rouge. (Pascrell posted it on his website, presumably for the convenience of his constituents.)
“Recent reports about compensation that LSU will pay its current and former football coaches have raised significant concerns about whether the university is operating consistent with its tax-exempt status,” Pascrell wrote.
“It is unclear how such lucrative compensation contracts further LSU’s overall educational mission and benefit your student body as a whole,” Pascrell said.
He then moves on to the familiar complaint that college coaches get rich while the athletes struggle.
“These contracts also present a stark contrast to the benefits received by the university’s student-athletes, whose grants-in-aid each semester pale in comparison to their coaches’ compensation,” Pascrell continued.
But LSU’s student athletes are not conscripted to play for the university. In fact, recent reforms give athletes more leeway to cash in on their fame and to switch schools. ESPN reported that Alabama quarterback Bryce Young was offered $1 million in promotional deals. And that was over the summer, before he even played and won the Heisman Trophy.
We agree that $10 million a year seems like a lot for a football coach. And LSU would be better off if its donors opened their wallets for academic needs with the same enthusiasm as they support the hiring — and firing — of coaches. Perhaps Tate will have better success than his predecessors, especially with his emphasis on academic research and the ways it helps to grow a local economy.
But in a free-market economy, coaches make what they’re worth in terms of bringing revenue and attention to their schools. You think Alabama regrets paying Nick Saban nearly $10 million a year?
While $10 million a year is a lot, $4 million isn’t spare change, and Pascrell didn’t launch an investigation when Rutgers, his home-state university, paid that much to Greg Schiano.
So why the sudden interest in what coaches make?
“It was a question of timeliness,” said Mark Finebaum, who is communications director for Pascrell, referring to the signing of Kelly and Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley, who jumped ship to the University of Southern California. USC is a private school, but reports suggest that Riley’s deal is even sweeter than Kelly’s.
“It’s not unique to LSU or football or Division 1,” Finebaum said. “It just so happens that these stories broke in the last couple of weeks. As a committee, we’re focused on tax reform issues.”
Pascrell is chairman of the House Ways and Means’ subcommittee on oversight.
The congressman is a Democrat, and the way his party is spreading money around, they’re going to have to find someone to tax.
But not to worry, congressman, Brian Kelly didn’t just get a big raise for coming to LSU. His tax bill went up as well. Big time.
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