PRENTISS SMITH
Contributing Columnist
Louisiana is one of the poorest states in the union, and that is not an exaggeration. It is 48th in education and opportunity behind such states as Mississippi and Alabama. It is ranked 50th in crime and corrections, 49th in natural environment, 47th in economy and infrastructure, and 46th in health care.
In other words, the state of Louisiana is at the bottom of the totem pole in almost every quality-of-life metric that matters, and yet, the flagship university of the state, LSU, is about to pay its incoming head football coach over $100 million. It is obscene, and it shows where the priorities of the schools lie.
I love sports, and I especially love LSU football. As a parent of two LSU graduates who bleed purple and gold, I am concerned about the willingness of the school to get rid of Coach Orgeron, who just won the national championship just two years ago. Yes, he has some personal problems, but why pay him to leave? It doesn’t make sense.
I understand the desire to win and to be a top-notch program, but what about giving the guy a chance to get better players? Not only did the school kick him to the curb, but they did it also while still having to pay him millions of dollars to leave and to sit on the sidelines for a couple of years.
It is as if the school has money to burn or that they have a printing press spewing out millions of dollars. We are talking about a state school of one of the poorest states in the Union that is willing to pay a coach who has never won a national championship $100 million. It is obscene, and Louisianans should be appalled at what is going on in Baton Rouge right now, and I don’t expect it to change.
Yes, there are rabid fans of the football team who see nothing wrong with a state school paying these exorbitant amounts of money for a college football coach. LSU is not the only one. It has become standard and not the exception. Alabama, whose quality-of-life metrics are not much better than Louisiana’s metrics, pays Nick Saban almost $12 million a year. Texas A&M just gave their head coach $100 million, and so on and so forth. It is crazy, but it is the way of the college football world right now.
College football has become a cash cow for many of these schools because of the television money. The LSU program's revenue comes from ticket sales, ad revenues and contributions, thanks to the large arm of the Tiger Athletic Foundation. That is fine, but no college football coach should be making $10 million a year. What is that all about, and what about the other employees of the state that deserve to be paid better, like teachers and professors, who really do the hard work in shaping young minds and preparing young people for their future life’s work?
Governor John Bel Edwards promised that he would have teachers’ pay in Louisiana at the regional average of $55,000 before he leaves office in January of 2023. If as much emphasis was paid to the front-line teachers as is paid to the football program, maybe that promise would not just be a bunch of words coming out of a politician’s mouth.
The national average for a schoolteacher in America is $60,000 a year, and no teacher in Louisiana should be making less than that. That is even more obscene than paying a football coach $100 million. According to U.S. News and World Report, Louisiana is now three for three in being recognized as the worst state based on health care, education and infrastructure, and that is a dubious distinction that no state should be proud of. The obscenity of it all, and make no mistake about it, it is obscene and shows where the state’s priorities lie. And that is the way I see it. smithpren@aol.com