Snips from a Dave Zirin article: "Lavar Ball, the garrulous hype-man/father of UCLA star freshman Lonzo Ball as well as upcoming prepsters LaMelo Ball and Liangelo Ball, was asked if he believed that he was “exploiting” his sons. His response: “What do you think UCLA is doing?” Half the sports commentariat reached for their fainting couches and the other half said, “Damn right.” This nexus of labor exploitation and bracketology is seen most clearly when we look at coaching salaries. The five highest-paid coaches in this year’s tournament—Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Kentucky’s John Calipari, Arizona’s Sean Miller, Kansas’s Bill Self, and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo earn an average of roughly $5.6 million a year, with Coach K’s $7.3 million annual take on the top of this particular pyramid. In 1984, the average coaching salary was closer to $50,000 than $5 million. John Wooden, who coached UCLA to 10 championships in 12 seasons, and retired in 1975, never made more than $35,000 a season. I asked UCLA all-time great and Wooden protégé Kareem Abdul Jabbar how much Wooden would make if he coached today, and the normally taciturn Kareem laughed and said simply, “They couldn’t afford him.”... The highest-paid college coaching job in 1975 was valued at $35,000 a year. In 2017 dollars, that would be an annual take of $159,000. The cult of bracketology has taken a $159,000-a-year job and turned it into one that pays $7.3 million... The NCAA is is a zombie system, feeding on the flesh of the people they are supposed to be educating. It’s an operation that needs to be wrecked and rebuilt, not just for the good of the players but for the good of the rest of us who are complicit in this madness."
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2017-03-13-1235/index.html My Comment: No one is given 14 years anymore in a "student athlete" sports venture that has evolved into uber Quasi-Professionalism. Some won't be given 14 months. Too much money at stake and too much money concentrated into too few hands.
