Editor's note: Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim announced Wednesday that he will be retiring in three years. Athletic director Daryl Gross also resigned to take another position at the school in the wake of the sanctions levied against the school. Full story here.
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IN 2008, FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS led by Citigroup and Merrill Lynch received $175 billion of taxpayer money during the federal government bailout, then gave their employees $32.6 billion in bonuses. In 2014, Bud Selig and Roger Goodell each earned more in salary and bonuses than most every player in their sports.
As accountability continues its losing streak to big money, the Masters of the Universe solidify their place in America. Tom Wolfe's term, coined in the 1980s to describe ruthless Wall Street climbers, now applies to elite college coaches as the sports industrial complex grows more powerful. Jim Boeheim and his fallen Syracuse basketball program are just the latest example. Boeheim, that great leader of young men who, like hundreds of others in his profession, has for years profited from the popular narrative of the coach as moral influence, was recently whacked by an eight-year NCAA investigation that portrayed him as the head of a corrupt program. The NCAA is hardly in a moral position to cast judgment on anyone, but both judge and defendant are part of the same cartel, and Boeheim was in violation of how the cartel does business.
Boeheim has been at Syracuse for 39 years and is the unquestioned leader of the university's basketball program. He responded to the sanctions by blaming rogue elements in his program instead of taking the responsibility that should come with his longevity and his $1.8 million annual salary. He then refused to appear at the postgame news conference that followed Syracuse's season-ending loss to North Carolina State. Instead, Boeheim stuck a poor assistant coach, Mike Hopkins, in front of the microphones while he shrank from the spotlight.
Now, there's a man who leads by example. Eighteen-year-olds across America clearly could learn from a man like Boeheim, whose program has now been placed on probation twice by the NCAA, yet he has already been enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
These Masters of the Universe answer to no one, and as their power increases, they grow even more belligerent. Former Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun, another old Big East titan, was blinded by his arrogance and power; like Boeheim, he bullied and berated anyone who dared to question him. Calhoun and UConn women's coach Geno Auriemma for years were the highest-paid employees in the state during weak economies, budget shortfalls and a widening gap between the value of a college education and the massive student debt it incurs. Calhoun was so smug as to say in 2009 he wouldn't give back a dime even as his players were exploited. A year later, his program was sanctioned by the NCAA for what the school admitted were "major violations" under his watch.
The system has been neatly arranged into a staggeringly lucrative financial machine, driven at the top by ESPN and other networks that pay millions to broadcast games, making valuable commodities out of both winning programs and the coaches themselves (who use the broadcast booth between jobs as a way station to remain visible). Unlike Wall Street, for which Main Street carries a certain distrust and disdain, these Masters of the Universe are loudly and blindly shielded by rabid fan bases, loyal alumni and university presidents seduced by positive self-image. Corruption is something the other team does.
All boats rise, except the workforce. The dollar amounts are so high, the business relationships so blurred, that the watchdogs have often become peers; million-dollar journalists cannot exist without $5 million coaches and $10 million pro players, and the result is less accountability. This is the inescapable truth of the industry. But what can at least be destroyed is the accompanying false narrative that coaches are anything more than millionaire executives running a billion-dollar operation.
How fitting that Boeheim flails and bullies as Dean Smith, a figure of another time, has been laid to rest. Smith is gone, and the moral imprimatur of coach as the molder of young men, father figure and mentor is gone too. If these men still do exist in the college game, they are the special exceptions. But Boeheim and his fellow Masters are special too, for they are the world's only CEOs who don't pay their employees.