Sept. 27^th Football

 Somewhere around 63 percent of University of Michigan students graduate with debt. The average amount owed is over 27 thousand dollars. How’s that for a graduation present? One result of this circumstance is that students have a great concern for what they will be able to earn once they graduate; so do their parents.  The parents have often financed much of their student’s college costs with the fervent expectation that the kid will get a decent job when they finish. So instead of majoring in philosophy, which he enjoys, Johnny majors in education and will spend a good part of the rest of his life unhappily teaching twelve-year-olds history and social studies.

And then we have the athletes; these men, if they play football for a major school like Michigan, may finish debt-free, if they graduate at all, and if they graduate with a meaningful degree.  The preferred major is General Studies. No science is required, no foreign language is required and this is a very popular major for football players. Perhaps they will take some courses in coaching football. Some football coaches are very well paid. Michigan’s new coach, Bill Harbaugh, an alum and former football player at Michigan was recently hired by the school for 8 million dollars. That makes Coach Harbaugh the highest paid state employee. Then there is the Michigan State football coach. Mark Dantonio, who earns 5.6 million a year and must be close behind Coach Harbaugh. The football coaches for the regional universities earn less, usually just between 500 thousand and a million a year.

Not many of the varsity football players at Michigan will ever get to be coaches of a Big Ten football team. The data show that only about 6 percent will ever play professional football and those for an average of less than four years. This has a benefit; recently post mortem analyses have shown that about 95 percent of professional football players whose brains were examined by a pathologist showed that these men had suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, (CTE); this is brain damage severe enough to be debilitating.

When did this start, high school, college, or not until the pros? No one knows. We do know that so far this season three high school kids have died after football injuries. College players are now often over 300 pounds and can run 40 yards in less than 45 seconds. But football is entertaining to watch; alumni demand winning teams and they are eager to subsidize that demand with money. The players have their moment of adulation in the spotlight and they aren’t complaining.  After all it’s a free country and like most everything else, it’s all about the money.