First Principles

Last week, UCONN’s men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun put the press conference beatdown on a sniveling reporter who tried to speak truth to power by asking him about his big salary of $1.6 million per year in a time of vast budget deficits.  The coach pointed out that his efforts earn $12 million per year back to the public University, and then said some other stuff better seen than transcripted here.  It was an awesome defense of the glories of capitalism.

For his reward?  Two Connecticut state lawmakers (both Democrats) demanded a reprimand.

This seemingly frivolous affair is a perfect example of how stupid, short-sighted, and self-destructive Obama’s new war on our nation’s most productive citizens really is.

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According to the coach’s numbers, his efforts result in a net gain of $10.4 million for the public university, which otherwise would have to be borne by taxpayers already deep in the hole.  Or students paying higher tuition.  Or alumni making donations.  Or cuts in educational programs, tutoring, lab equipment, or computer technology.

And that’s the direct effect of his winning ways.  One can’t ignore the intangibles.  A high profile, successful sports franchise in college brings prestige, which ups the application pool, which means a higher quality student body, which brings prestige…  Rinse, lather, repeat.

And then there is the loyalty created in your alumni through the experience of going to college where you got to follow your team deep into the NCAA tournament year after year, and cheer a top quality team with thousands of your closest fans chanting in unison…  Those same top quality students your sports franchise initially attracted to your school will eventually make a lot of money, money they could donate charitably to their alma mater if they still think about it when seeing their team still winning on TV years later.

Not just anyone can coach a basketball team at that level and take a team to the NCAA tournament.  Even fewer people can manage that feat year after year after year.  Calhoun’s talent is rare, and rare things are expensive.  A lesser talent would cost less at the outset, but millions in lost revenue and donations would evaporate – and that would be a net loss.  Fortunately for the students at UCONN and for college basketball fans everywhere, UCONN recognized this, paid Calhoun what he was worth, and in return the coach turned that talent to good use.

He made it productive.

His productivity benefited him very greatly, to be sure.  But it benefited the college even more.  It benefited the students and the academic programs that money helped support.  It benefited the taxpayers of Connecticut who had that much less to pay in order to fund their public university.  It benefited all people who made a living from that success – sports reporters, food vendors, bar owners, facilities managers…

Why, it’s like a stimulus package without the debt!  Whoduv thunk…

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But all that reporter could think about was that a savage ol’ glorified gym teacher got paid millions of dollars, and other people made less, and that must be bad.  The gap between rich and poor and all that.

Imagine if those critical of this high salary had their way, and decided, “We shouldn’t value a basketball coach more than a nurse or a cop or the garbage man.  He doesn’t need all that money.  No state employee should make more than the governor!  That doesn’t make any sense.  Why, it’s downright immoral and shameful in what it says about society’s priorities.”

Calhoun would leave.  He’d go to another school and bring his talent and all that comes with it there.  (That’s the free market for you.)  The new salary cap would stymie the recruitment of another top quality coach, prospective athletes would look elsewhere, and so would students interested in having the full student life experience the grew up expecting when they watched the games on TV.

Even if the basketball program was still profitable after this, it wouldn’t be $10.4 million profitable.  Those millions would have to be made up for somewhere.  The governor might have to propose education cuts, and then he could have nasty, childish op/eds written about him by the state’s higher education chancellor for being “a greedy, uninterested, unengaged human being whose only, and I mean only, goal is to see what [he] can do for himself and his greedy friends.”

And of course, Calhoun’s “greed” would be blamed as the cause, when really the greed was on the part of the oxygen-thief socialists who didn’t think talent and hard work ought to be rewarded – or at least that they should more directly share in that reward for the sake of “fairness” and “equality.”

At least if people bought that crap, one group would benefit.  Populist Democratic politicians.  Not that they’re exactly an endangered species in Connecticut.

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We tend to see sports as an escape – a distraction from the real world that’s beyond politics, economic meltdowns, al Qaeda, and the other ills of the real world.  But they are still part of this world, and they still play by the World’s rules.  Unfortunately, even in what should be the pure meritocracy of the court or the field, one of those rules is that the successful and talented will be resented by the lazy freeloader who convinces himself that someone else must be to blame for his own lack of success.

Another lesson is that sports – even college sports – are a business.  And successful business leadership is worth millions if that leadership makes millions more for the stakeholders.

Fortunately for Calhoun, President Obama is a basketball fan, and probably won’t run around the campaign trail demonizing rich, greedy, under-regulated, and overpaid coaches.  I think even he would recognize the problem with slashing a top coach’s salary.

But for the same reasons the two idiotic state legislators in Connecticut and that report attacked Coach Calhoun, the nightmare scenario of assaulting society’s producers is, in pretty much every other financial sector, being played out right now.

For the nation as a whole, unless the esteemed economic team driving our country off the cliff takes heed of Calhoun’s glorious rant, that guarantees us a losing season.