A wise man once said that a job is worth whatever you can convince someone to pay you to do it. A corollary of that principle is this: If someone wants to give you a ridiculous amount of money to do a job you wouldn’t mind doing, don’t argue with them.
Those bits of advice come to mind every year when the IU salary database is released, and those eye-popping numbers at the top of the chart get tongues and imaginations wagging.
The ship has long since sailed to lament the change in cultural values that elevates athletic pursuits above intellectual achievement, which results in someone doing groundbreaking research in medicine or physics being paid less than someone who teaches blocking schemes to football linemen. Once again, four of the top five base salary positions — and five of the top 10 — are in athletics
At least IU President Michael McRobbie is atop the salary pyramid, although the head football and basketball coaches may end up making more in 2017 in total compensation. New men’s basketball coach Archie Miller, for example, is expected to make $3.35 million in his first year once all bonuses and contracted promotional income are included.
It’s a lot of money by Bloomington standards. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual salary for all occupations in the Bloomington metropolitan area in 2016 was $42,830. Someone making that level of salary would have to work 14 years to receive what McRobbie will make in one, 78 years to pull down what Archie Miller will make next year in total compensation.
However, that is a trick of mathematics and not a fair way to judge the relative value of jobs because it doesn’t consider the responsibilities or amount of grief that comes with work that pays a lot of money.
It is also true that the more money someone is paid, the more their life becomes the property of those cutting the checks. That’s particularly true of head coaches in marquee collegiate sports such as football and men’s basketball, who go into each season like the warriors of ancient Sparta, whose mothers told their sons before battle: Come home victorious, or come home on your shield. In the big-money arenas that top tier athletic conferences have become, it’s literally win or go home.
That’s a lot of pressure to carry around day after day, and Athletic Director Fred Glass, who is sitting above $560,000 in base pay, is in the same boat. So is McRobbie, for different reasons, as he juggles competing agendas of alumni, faculty, students, trustees, donors and politicians. The question remains whether all that is worth making 20 times or more what those at the bottom of the scale are paid.
For today, we’ll punt that question and say it’s above our pay grade.