John Calipari gets helpful lesson on how capitalism works

John Calipari gets helpful lesson on how capitalism works

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John Calipari gets helpful lesson on how capitalism works
Arkansas coach John Calipari speaks with reporters.
Credit: Pig Trail Nation

The Protect College Sports Act passed a vote in the U.S. Senate earlier this week, bringing the legislation one step closer to becoming law. Ahead of the vote and since its initial success, we saw another big push for the bill across sports media by some of the minds behind the bill, including several hits from Nick Saban across ESPN and an appearance from Senator Ted Cruz on College GameDay.

But through these appearances, one question seems to have stumped those lobbying the hardest for the bill to pass—why should spending on players be capped, while spending on other parties like coaches continues to be determined by markets? Surely the fact that LSU is paying Brian Kelly $54 million to not coach football anymore is at least as representative of a spending crisis in college sports as a quarterback getting his fair value, right?

As a the head coach of Arkansas men’s basketball, it is not hard to guess which side of the Protect College Sports Act debate John Calipari is on.

Calipari, like most coaches, and former coaches, and television executives, and now senators, supports the bill, which would among other things establish a salary cap on the potential earnings of college athletes.

But Calipari, like so many others who support the bill, struggled quite a bit to explain why he believes the bill needs to be passed while speaking with reporters on Wednesday.

“Right now we need something to give us some semblance of order, and some guardrails,” Calipari said. On their own, a semblance of order and some guardrails don’t sound do bad, but could you be a bit more specific coach?

“There’ll be people against it that think there should be unions, they should be unionized, agents should have a free hand to do what they want. They talk about, well what about coaches? I’m going to say this, I probably shouldn’t. Nine of my players make more than my assistants. And the other three make more than all my staff. And we are not one of the highest payers. We’re just not.”

A person familiar with how the free market works might look at that statement and think, “Wow coach! Seems like you’re pretty lucky to have so much funding to field a team of players that talented and a great staff!” But that is not the point John Calipari is making.

Calipari is trying to say, without directly saying it, that it is ridiculous that a player could potentially make more money than a coach. But if you ask about how much a coach makes, well, that’s a ridiculous question, because he earned his money.

“They you can say, ‘What about you?’ I’ve been doing it 40 years. Started as a volunteer, two years as a part-time assistant, and I’ve kind of done okay at different programs. So yeah, they’re paying me. But how about this? All the coaches on this campus, in every sport, make less than the rev share, which is $22 million, and it’s much less. So the players are getting more than the coaches. I just don’t understand who could be against it.”

To put his complaint more plainly: John Calipari is very against the idea of college athletes like his players earning their fair value as deemed by the market, because that puts us in a world without “guardrails” or a “semblance of order.” But when it comes to him or his coaching staff earning their fair value as deemed by the market, well, come on, he’s been coaching college basketball for a pretty long time, and he’s pretty good at it! It wouldn’t be right to hold back his potential earnings, which he worked so hard for, would it?

College coaches are feeling insecure because their players have more money and more independence than they once did. Calipari seems to imply that his players making more than his coaching staff is an issue for some reason, to which the obvious follow-up question is, “Okay, why is that an issue?” Check out the salaries of NFL and NBA players vs. their coaches. The stars of the sport make more money than the people that coach them, and it all works out fine.

Online, the response to Calipari’s complaints from fans and media alike was widely some version of, “I don’t know what to tell you buddy, that’s literally capitalism.”

The scene that played out with John Calipari is hilariously similar to one sports fans saw earlier this week when former Alabama football coach Nick Saban was appearing on ESPN’s First Take. Saban was asked by Stephen A. Smith a question so obvious that it’s impossible Saban didn’t know it was coming—if you think we need to cap spending on college players, why not also cap spending on college coaches?

“Well, these things are totally different markets,” Saban said. “That’s like asking me ‘Does a student’s scholarship equal the professor’s pay?’ I mean, how much value does a coach create for a university?”

Even if coaches and players are “totally different markets,” in itself a dubious distinction, why would that matter anyways? How much value does a coach create for a university? Unclear, but we’ve always let the free market decide!

The enjoining thread between Calipari, Saban, and most of the supporters of the Protect College Sports Act is “Free markets for me, but not for thee.” Ask them why, and they sputter nonsense.

If any one of these coaches came out and said, “You know what, we do need to rein in spending across the board, and that includes coaches,” they’d have a whole lot more credibility in their stated quest of protecting college sports. But the Protect College Sports Act is not about protecting college sports. It is about protecting the parties that control college sports, which has up until this point, not included the athletes that make those sports great. Calipari and Saban are fine with schools spending as much money as they want on hiring them for their coaching services, but are willing to go to war to make sure their players don’t get the same right.

The post John Calipari gets helpful lesson on how capitalism works appeared first on Awful Announcing.

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