Fresh off shocking the world with an upset of Kansas, Northern Iowa head coach Ben Jacobson is about to get pretty tidy pay raise. Ten more years on his contract, and almost twice what he made this year:
Northern Iowa’s Coach Gets P-A-I-D; When Does Ali Farokhmanesh Get His Check?
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↵Panthers athletic director Troy Dannen announced the details Wednesday. It will increase Jacobson's annual salary to $450,000 starting next season, with annual raises of $25,000 throughout the length of the contract that runs through 2020.
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↵And... Good for him. Northern Iowa had a great year, and a pretty amazing post-season.
↵But allow me to rant for a quick second. If Ali Farokhmanesh hadn’t hit that ridiculous three-pointer to seal the win for Northern Iowa, does Jacobson still get this contract? Every year, the performances of college players catapult mid-major coaches onto the short list of big programs all over the country. Those coaches either get paid big money at a new job, or they get paid a bunch of money to stay. But what about the players that made this possible?
↵They get nothing.
↵Right now, a player like Ali Farokhmanesh probably doesn’t care, but down the line, after he’s struck out playing professionally and left to search for a real job, you couldn’t blame him for wondering where his big payday was when all that magic went down. It’s the great hypocrisy of college athletics, where Cinderella stories are big business for everyone involved, except the players at the center of all the magic. And never is the NCAA’s hypocrisy as transparent as it is in March. The Northern Iowa coach gets job security for the next decade, and the Northern Iowa star has to look for a job in three weeks.
↵Something’s wrong there.
↵(End of sanctimony. ... But seriously.)
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