Notre Dame Football: Lou Holtz critical of modern coaching salaries

The former Notre Dame football coach had some choice words on the amount of cash some coaches are making these days.

Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz has historically been a straight-shooter. Ask him a question and you’ll get his exact thoughts and feelings on the matter. He’s not concerned with what’s popular or socially acceptable. He’s only concerned with what he feels is right and wrong.

We need more Lou Holtz’s in the world.

Last week, the former Irish coach was a guest speaker at an event in Raleigh, North Carolina. During his speech, he gave his usual motivational talk about setting goals, regardless of age.

He also sounded off on modern coaching salaries, scoffing in particular at Dabo Swinney making more than $9 million a year.

Holtz points at those types of salaries as another reason why college athletes feel they should be compensated. It’s tough to sell a kid who is doing most of the work to generate that the revenue that his “boss” is making millions while he gets compensated to the tune of less than $150,000 in tuition.

As Darren Rovell pointed out in 2017, the money that college coaches are making now dwarfs what Holtz and the best coaches in the country were getting less than 40 years ago.

That’s right. Dabo Swinney is making 20-times what Bear Bryant was making in 1982.

I understand Holtz’s frustrations, and things like this do put the dollars and cents of collegiate sports in perspective. That said, America is about supply and demand — capitalism, baby. You get paid according to how hard you are to replace and how rare your skill set is.

Elite college football coaches don’t grow on trees, and that’s why the very best get paid they way they do. Additionally, Holtz himself was a huge player in terms of boosting the popularity and profitability of collegiate athletics — specifically college football — to where it is now.

Some will read and hear Holtz’s comments and sympathize with the point he’s trying to make. Others will only see an old man yelling at a cloud.

I suppose I’m somewhere in between.