Consider This from NPR - Big Money Swirls Around College Football's Star Coaches

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Deion Sanders' decision to leave Jackson State for the University of Colorado has stirred a lot of debate in the world of college football. LA Times sports culture critic Tyler Tynes explains why some are saying that Sanders is letting down Historically Black Colleges and Universities by leaving Jackson State. And Washington Post sports writer Liz Clarke breaks down how big money swirls around some of college football's star coaches.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. When NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders began his four-year, $1.2 million contract to coach football at Jackson State University, he spoke about how special a moment that was for him. These are tears. Just to establish how proud I am to stand before my people.

I said to stand before my people. That was Sanders speaking at the historically black university back in 2020. His hire was special for Jackson State football, too. JSU had been struggling on the field in recent years. And given his NFL resume, Sanders could probably have gone anywhere to begin his college coaching career. But he said he had some help in choosing Jackson State. I believe that God led me here, not man. I'm going to say it real slow.

I believe that God led me here, not man, because man didn't believe that I was coming. Whether by divine intervention or sheer coaching talent, Sanders did succeed at turning things around at JSU, ending this last season with a perfect 12-0 record and a second straight conference championship. And Sanders, I mean, he was on top of the world. Here he is speaking to ESPN last October. I do what I love and I love what I do. This is a moment, man. This is a darn moment. Well, that moment is over.

Sanders announced this month that he would be cutting his time at JSU short to take the head coaching job at the University of Colorado. In coaching, you get elevated or you get terminated. Ain't no other way. Sanders had brought a national spotlight to Jackson State and raised the profile of HBCU Athletics, too. Now, in announcing his departure, Sanders said part of his motivation was to tackle disparities at the higher levels of collegiate football. It's been four or more African-American head coaches at the next level that has been terminated. I haven't heard not one other than a candidate like myself to replace them. So to me, that's a problem. Well, some critics have said that Sanders is letting down HBCUs by leaving Jackson State.

Others have supported his move to a more prestigious football program and a new five-year $29.5 million contract. Consider this. While Sanders' decision to leave JSU has sparked a lot of debate, a move like this is not uncommon in the world of college football, where schools are willing to shell out big bucks to attract star coaches. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR.

Deion Sanders is a football legend, an NFL Hall of Famer, and his decision to coach football at Jackson State, a historically black university, raised the national profile of HBCU athletic programs. So when Sanders announced he was leaving JSU for a new coaching job at the University of Colorado, some fans and critics felt like he was turning his back on HBCUs. I think on his face, it's not that big of a deal, right? You know, man takes a job, gets a better job in some respects, and he gets a big pay raise. But when you're a head coach at an HBCU, it comes with sometimes a bigger commitment. That's LA Times sports culture critic Tyler Tynes speaking with my colleague Juana Summers. So when you leave Jackson State, especially after you sold a very specific dream, it's going to come with a fervor like no other. So for people who don't follow college football as closely as you and I do,

talk about what that dream is that Deion Sanders sold to this school. What did he give them? He gave them a dream like any coach would. He said that God brought him to Jackson State to revive HBCU football. And listen, depending on how you think about football, Deion Sanders made good on his dream. ESPN came down, the whole world watched college football in the South in a way they hadn't in many years. But any time a college football coach leaves an HBCU, particularly for a PWI. A predominantly white institution.

Mm-hmm. It's going to ruffle a few feathers. In the days since Deion Sanders announced that he was leaving Jackson State for Colorado, there's been some people who have been critical of him for turning his back on HBCUs, they've suggested, perhaps even turning his back on Black people. Is that a fair criticism to you? I think anytime we run the risk of calling a man a sellout before we actually get there, it gets dangerous. We don't really know what Dion's motivations are yet, though in the past, Dion's motivations have been Dion. And so when the idea is that you've gone to a historically Black college to sell a dream of prosperity and bringing them back to glory, I think it might be

fair criticism to think he's done something wrong, especially in the way that he left Jackson State, in the way that he's talked to both his new players and his old players. There's fair game on Deion Sanders all around. Whether he sold out Black people or not, I think is a stretch just too far. You've documented a time when the best Black players in the sport would sometimes opt to play for the best Black coaches at HBCUs, but the college football landscape has changed since then. What do you think would need to happen for HBCUs to retain national level talent today? We'd have to have a new sport. I would love nothing more than for every HBCU in the world to be able to go toe-to-toe with the best PWIs, the best Power Fives in the country.

But the reality is that between certain legalese in our country and also certain roadblocks when it comes to football, our HBCUs have been stripped of their power. And that power is not coming back in most cases. Though we do think that a lot of these recruits could and should choose HBCUs over some other schools, I think it's wrong sometimes to ask teenagers to make big decisions like that. Black players are now the majority of top-level college football players, and they're often the superstars who show up on ESPN no matter what school they're playing for. But black head coaches, those are far more rare in college football, let alone the NFL. So do you think Deion Sanders hiring opens any doors there? Anytime a black coach can get a head coaching job at a predominantly white university,

it's a very, very, very big step one way or the other. I don't know what Deion's hiring is going to do in terms of the ripples and effects for college football. I hope it means that more black folks get hired at the minimum. That was LA Times sports culture critic Tyler Tynes speaking to Juana Summers. Money, obviously, it plays a huge role in college sports, and it's certainly a factor in Deion Sanders' move from Jackson State to the University of Colorado. Under his new contract in Colorado, he will be making somewhere between $5 and $6 million a year. That is a lot of money, but that sort of salary isn't rare in college football. In fact, Sanders doesn't even make the top 10 of college football's highest paid coaches.

There's also a pattern of coaches getting scooped up by big universities while still under contract with another school. And sometimes colleges even pay millions of dollars to coaches they already have under contract to get them to leave sooner and make way for a new coach. I spoke with Washington Post sports writer Liz Clark about this culture in college football. She helped me get a sense of just how much cash is being thrown around here. So the amount colleges feel it's worth to pay someone to go away is escalating right in step with the escalation of revenues that are going into college football. And they're obscene, going straight up with no sign of ending. So some buyouts are worth $10 million, $11 million, even $15 million to pay a coach to go away and not coach. Well, let me ask you this. When did this shift,

paying these huge sums of money for contract buyouts, when did that first start happening? A lot of the data, I may quote, comes from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. The Knight Commission sees an uptick or a starting point when the college football playoff system began and networks started pouring money into colleges for the right to broadcast this. So that would have been, I believe, around 2014. And just this week, the college football playoff organization announced at the start of the 2024 season, the playoff will go from four teams to 12. So they're going to triple the number of schools that can compete. And the estimates of what this will mean dollar wise is that the money coming in for this playoff is going to quadruple to possibly $2 billion. Oh, my God. Insane. Okay. Well, this Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics

that you mentioned, I know that they found, for example, that over the first five weeks of this college football season, five Power Five coaches were fired with buyouts exceeding $55 million, right? Like, has the NCAA weighed in on this? No. And just this week, the Knight Commission really, you know, wagged a finger at the NCAA for dragging its feet. The Knight Commission is saying, you have got to spend this money for the benefit of the students,

for their health, to preserve their safety, for their education, spend it on gender equity, spend it on whatever it takes to stop doing away with Olympic sports. Well, if revenue is expected to just continue ballooning for these college football programs, What is the next step that you are specifically going to be watching for in all of this? You know, as the money gets a bit more outrageous, you periodically hear calls that Congress should step in and set some limits and make some rules. There seems to be no appetite or traction for that. I'm not sure university presidents have the will to draw any lines. So it may just be that the Power Five conferences just kind of spin off into this new entity outside the NCAA and are sort

of a quasi-pro model and don't really worry too much if they're tethered to the education part of higher education. That was Liz Clark of The Washington Post. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University drives discovery, innovation, and creative endeavors to solve some of society's greatest challenges. Groundbreaking investments in neuroscience, climate change, Alzheimer's research, and cybersecurity mean IU sets new standards to move the world forward, unlocking cures and solutions that lead to a better future for all. More at iu.edu forward. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations

and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org.