CSotD: Sunday Funday Strikes Again
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Tank raises the popular question of why football coaches are better paid at Div I schools than professors, and then half answers it.
Filling the stadium is a good source of revenue, but teams only play a half-dozen home games, so that the Colorado Buffalos, who apparently have the most expensive tickets at $517 but a relatively modest stadium at 53,750, would take in $167 million or so, minus whatever it costs them to let their own students in, which is something but not $517 a pop.
That sounds pretty good, but we’d need to adjust for the share they pay visiting teams, and then add the share they’d get for away-games plus their share of TV revenues plus jersey sales and so forth.
Then add what they’d get for playoffs and bowl games and you can see why they pay the coach so much. And why they fire him if he’s not getting the teams into those playoffs and bowl games. And why the kids out there getting their brains scrambled deserve to earn more than a free bachelor’s degree.
Point being that it’s big business, so, if it’s gonna happen, you shouldn’t complain about coaching salaries. Show me the history professor who’s bringing in that kind of lucre and I’ll apologize.
The open question is that “if it’s gonna happen” part. I’ve been to Division I games and I’ve been to Division III games. They were all competitive and fun to watch but I was either getting into the Div III games free, or for a ticket price too petty to remember.
It’s been going on a long time. Even back when Rockne (Class of 1914) played the game, it was revenue positive, and, when he was coaching, there were justified rumors about the amateur status of his star player, George Gipp.
Pity Major League Baseball that has to run a web of minor league farm clubs while the NFL and NBA have universities doing it for them.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I wouldn’t worry all that much about peer pressure in Snug Harbor, as long as Amelia’s around to handle the influencers. However, I share Leroy’s doubts about them, because knowing the money and logistics that go into shooting a 30-second commercial — by reading about it and by having done it for a living — I’d say the companies get one helluva bargain by just sending these shills a few free samples.
And just to prove I’m not on the take as an influencer, I’ll rudely point out that this cartoon means BC really is set in that time era, since the German language didn’t begin formal development until the early 7th century, so, naturally, he’d never heard the word.
Later, “gesundheit” (“health”) became a perfectly good mainstream word, which (along with “God bless you”) is reportedly based on the micro-second your body appears to shut down when you sneeze.
Not sure I believe that, but you can say “gesundheit” in public without worrying that ICE will wrestle you to the ground and send you to a penal colony. Just don’t say “Salud!”
Noth has an interesting conversation about this 2012 cartoon on his Substack. The feedback he got was generally positive, especially from people named Rosenthal, but he worried that he had suggested there was something inherently funny about Jewish names.
My comment was that, having grown up on Mad Magazine, Milt Gross and the Borscht Belt comedians on Ed Sullivan, I found it funny and non-offensive. As a kid, I thought everyone in jokes was Jewish, except Uncle Tonoose, who was Lebanese, and there are a lot of Lebanese names that aren’t inherently funny. Danny Thomas didn’t pull that one out of a hat.
Comedy with an ethnic element nearly always contains an element of “We can say that, but you can’t.” Myron Cohen could make jokes about his fellow Jews that outsiders shouldn’t, while, for that matter, my son, a Navy veteran, can tell jokes about Marines and Coasties that wouldn’t be funny coming from me.
If you appreciate such insider conversations, bookmark the Cartoon Movement Substack, where Tjeerd Royaards opines in depth on cartooning issues.
Today’s Mr. Boffo is going to provoke the fussbudgets, who will be delighted for a chance to proclaim that they know “four score and seven years ago” is 87, not 67, while history buffs will also know that the Gettysburg Address was criticized at the time for being too short, that people who came to hear the president expected a good, long speech.
The question is, did Joe Martin make a mistake in his calculations, or was he making the point that P.R. people are stupifyingly ignorant? And should we get a second laugh over the people who will be frantic to show they caught the math “error” and spotted the well-known historic fact?
Alas, Martin doesn’t feature a comments section.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Suddenly everybody, even those with moderate cargo needs, seems to be driving bulbous cars. I don’t know how hard or easy they are to park, but I know that if somebody parks one by an intersection or a crosswalk, other drivers can’t see past it.
And that, aside from my preferring to pull out into traffic if I can see what’s coming, potential fender-benders aren’t the real issue.
A study in the UK showed a 44 percent higher risk of death for people on foot or bike hit by “supersized” SUVs, with the risk rising to double that or more for children. Part of the issue is that they are hit higher up than they would be with a smaller vehicle, and part of the issue is that drivers can’t see the area just in front of their vehicle.
I’d like to see license fees based on weight, and I don’t think it’s outlandish to limit parking spaces with critical sightlines to what were once regular-sized cars.
As for collision safety, it was all perfectly safe when everyone had small to medium vehicles. That ship has sailed, and I expect the whirling spike clubs to appear soon at a dealer near you.
Tell’em Christine sent you.
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