It’s college football, not just A&M

Yup. A 76.8 million dollar buyout is a lot of money for a college football coach. Especially one who slinks off with a winning, albeit mediocre record. We’re talking Jimbo Fisher at A&M, that seat of the intellect in College Station, TX. Let you in on a secret. I’ve lived in Texas for thirty years. I’ve been to Abilene. El Paso. Junction. Plano. Texarkana. Johnson City, Laredo. But I’ve never been to College Station. Not once. Not even tempted. I mean, like, why? What am I gonna see there I could see anywhere else in Texas? Well, maybe some bizarre rituals involving, you guessed it football, but Hell, I could walk up the street on a Friday night where I live and see that at the local high school. Big deal. It’s not like we’re talking USC and the –heehee– Trojans (could you think of a better mascot for SoCal than a brand of condom?). That’s a real spectacle, with the Captain from Castille and all that. And mine eyes have already seen that. In Berkeley. Never mind. I’ve been around.

But let’s get to the point. 77 million or so is big bucks. How big is big? Well, that depends. You know, the Econ like to tell us that we always need ask compared to what? Or, put just little differently, what’s the next best thing you could do with the money. This is known as opportunity cost. It’s a weird econ thang: you say what something is worth by looking away from at rather than directly at it. Actually, it makes all kind of sense, but since I no longer get paid to make sense, I will just get to the good part. Basically, what else could you do with 77 million bucks in Texas?

Funny you asked.

I have a few ideas. And if you don’t like them, come up with your own. For that matter, start your own blog. It’s a free country, at least until Trump gets reelected. So let’s get started. I’m not doing this in any particular order. Just grabbing low hanging fruit as they appear. Ok. We’re off.

The Texas Legislature is spending $6.6 million over the next two years to cover the cost of breakfast for students who qualify for reduced-price meals. The new funding is going to benefit about 1,800 students in Austin ISD. So our Lege, in its infinite wisdom (sarcasm) is going to spend 6.6 million to cover breakfast who qualify for reduced-priced meals. The following is coming from http://www.benefits.gov

Children may be determined “categorically eligible” for free meals through participation in certain Federal Assistance Programs, such as the SNAP, or based on their status as a homeless, migrant, runaway, or foster child.

Children enrolled in a federally-funded Head Start Program, or a comparable State-funded pre-kindergarten program, are also categorically eligible for free meals.

Children can also qualify for free or reduced price school meals based on household income and family size. Children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the Federal poverty level are eligible for free meals. Those with incomes between 130 and 185 percent of the Federal poverty level are eligible for reduced price meals.

Household Size*	Maximum Income Level (Per Year)
1	$26,973
2	$36,482
3	$45,991
4	$55,500
5	$65,009
6	$74,518
7	$84,027
8	$93,536

These are before taxes, by the way. For a household of say, three (single parent, two schoolchildren), that $45,991 is just about the cut-off level for reduced priced meals (I don’t have the free meal figure handy). So, think of it this way, a family of three is going to be pulling in less than $46,000 pretax to qualify.

Now, I’m a scholar, so I’m used to getting my head blown off by my friendly fellow scholars when I screw up (I have reviews and referees reports to prove it). So don’t hold back if you think I’m way off base. I looked up the median salary for a custodian (janitor) in the Austin, TX, ISD. That’s around $36,000 a year. So, suppose that lady cleaning up after school has two school age kids and no husband (yes, I know, moral laxity, but it happens). Chances are that her kids qualify for at least reduced price meals at school. Maybe more.

So, if you take ole’ Jimbo’s buy out, by my back-of-the envelope calculations, you could probably feed 20,000 school kids (like the custodian’s) for two years up in Austin. Yeah, its an order of magnitude, but actually, since there are 3.65 million schoolchildren in Texas eligible for the program, 20,000 is as drop in the bucket. You’d have to buy out most of the college coaches in Texas to feed them suckers. So, depending on your point of view, Jimbo’s buy out is either too much or too little, depending on whether or not you’re into football or hungry children. Life, as the economist likes to point out, is about choices and scarcity. You are free to choose. You can’t have everything. TINSTAAFL. If you took economics in a Texas high school, undoubtedly taught by the football coach (dude, take my word for it–I’ve asked), Coach has written that imperishable acronym on the board THE VERY FIRST FREAKING DAY OF CLASS. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Got it? Yeah, a free lunch may cost A&M a football coach, dadgummit. It will at least coast Jimbo some fancy lunches up there in College Station. You got that? Good.

But why stop at eating? Hell, don’t we all have to think about what we would do if we got sick? Yes, I know. Prayer is the answer, and I do quite a bit of it. But Jesus never seems to want to pay the bills, sort of like an absent father (deep philosophy here): ” Vere tu es Deus absconditus” and all that jazz, but never mind. We’re doing econ, not theology (you say there’s no difference? Shame on you). So let’s talk Medicaid in Texas. Again, this is from the benefits.gov website.

To be eligible for Texas Medicaid, you must be a resident of the state of Texas, a U.S. national, citizen, permanent resident, or legal alien, in need of health care/insurance assistance, whose financial situation would be characterized as low income or very low income. You must also be one of the following:

• Pregnant, or (about abortion, don’t ask. You can get a posse after you in Texas)
• Be responsible for a child 18 years of age or younger, or
• Blind, or
• Have a disability or a family member in your household with a disability.
• Be 65 years of age or older.

For all intents and purposes, those income eligibility limits you already have are close enough for our purposes, so let’s take a look at what Jimbo’s 77 million could do. Now this is the medical system, so you know virtually anything I write is a gross oversimplification. I don’t want to mislead anyone, just establish some rough comparisons.

Medicine in Texas–the financial part at least–for low income people in particular, is a nightmare. Texas’ income limits for Medicaid are relatively low. Even a lot of poor families with children are above Medicaid income limits. And Obamacare–you know, the ACA–forget it. Texas does not have an ACA Expansion for Medicaid, which creates a sliding scale of subsidies for poor families. Why? Bless your heart. Greg Abbott, our crypto-fascist governor, doesn’t want Texas to get, I think, some 10 billion dollars in federal funds because, according to him, it’s the best way to vote for a tax increase (you gotta ask him). He says if you want health insurance, get a job. Well, gotta tell you, even when I was working that was problematic, because my university-funded medical coverage was very expensive–actually it stunk out loud. And we were not poor. let alone have children for whom we had no medical insurance because we couldn’t afford it.

Subject to a whole lotta qualifications (and I mean a lot, so this is a very rough figure which will yield generous results–this is if you’re under 65 and basically healthy (I think)) the average Texas medicaid expenditure is around $8,500. Well, ta, da, you could fund about 10,000 average Medicaid expenditures, which, yup, ain’t much–and which is why Abbott’s refusal to do anything even remotely humane is disgusting. Even Jimbo’s buyout would be a drop in the bucket in this arena. If you figure that you might get an ACA policy for $2,400–I’m looking around on various plans–you might say Jimbo gives you 40,000 people. When you consider that there are 1.5 million uninsured Texas adults–yup. According to another site I’m ransacking “Texas Medicaid does not cover adults in poverty without dependent children, unless they have a serious or permanent disability, are elders in poverty, or get temporary maternity coverage that ends 2 months after the birth. The Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) directed that all 50 states would offer Medicaid to US citizen adults, but a 2012 Supreme Court Decision ruled that states that did not provide that coverage could not be penalized with loss of federal Medicaid funds. As of May 2020, Texas was one of only 14 states not providing Medicaid to adults in poverty.” Bless yore heart. Y’all got that? I ain’t real sure I do. Go to this link below if you really want to get your hair curled.

Medicaid

Yeah, it’s grim.

So here we are again with Jimbo’s too much or too little question. It seems like a shagload of money to most people, and it is. But when measured on a scale of social need like Medicare or Medicaid, Lord, it’s a pittance, honestly. So by all means, hate on Texas, hate on college football, and, if you must, hate on poor Jimbo. But he is an optical illusion, folks. Sort of a mirage of potential public wealth if we can only get our–well, “values” straight.

And besides, you think Jimbo was the only one with a sweet deal. My Lord, when I look at college football coaches financial packages, at least the D1 variety, I figure I need a CFA to explain most of them to me. Nick Saban (Alabama): Saban’s eight-year deal is worth $93.6 million and includes yearly escalators. In the first year of the contract last year, his salary was $10.7 million, but that number will go up to at least $12.7 million by the time the deal expires. Dabbo Swinney (Clemson) Swinney agreed to a 10-year deal worth $115 million over the offseason, making him one of the nation’s highest-paid head coaches. A two-time national champion, Swinney’s deal would keep him with the program through 2031. Lincoln Riley (USC to get away the South, for God’s sake). Lincoln Riley turned USC around right away after leaving Oklahoma, taking the Trojans from a 4-8 record in 2021 to an 11-3 mark in 2022. He also received an impressive salary when he arrived in Los Angeles at $10 million per year. But don’t spend it all, because SC just got beat by UCLA and is having a bad season. The doyennes of sports journalism in SoCal are already saying Riley may be history.

So it’s everywhere, and, therefore, nowhere, as far as big time college football is concerned. You local D3 coach, however, is not to be mocked and spat upon. He’s probably not grossing much more than you Primary Care Physician. You are going to have to look it up. Enlighten me.

College football at the big-time level is merely the cesspool of the adjoining university. For those of us who have been around big time academics, a certain numbness sets in after a while. We know what goes on. Teaching. Research. Getting ahead. It disgusts a lot of us. Sooner or later, we burn out, get out, or retire out (or all three!). It’s like, hey, you got the game on? You headed out to the fabulous feed your alumni group is putting on? Better look in the mirror. Cause, just like with our political system, if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re–as we used say, part of the problem. We have done this to ourselves, step by step, over the past 50 years. Ain’t no one else to blame. Not Poor Jimbo Fisher, at least. He’ll cry all the way to the bank, for sure, tears of laughter at what knuckleheads USAmericans are.

By the way, years ago, I read a great book by a guy who wrote for SI, Rick Telander, called A Payroll to Meet. It was about the antics of the SMU alums in the era of Eric Dickerson, stuff that got the poor Mustangs the “death penalty” in football back in the day. Check it out. I bet it has aged very well.

Meanwhile, Go Iggles……….