Saban Style Scheduling

So Nick Saban was asked a question the other day regarding who he would like to have Alabama play in the future. The answer:

“I’d like to play Notre Dame,” Saban said during a question-and- answer period following Wednesday’s speech to a packed room of members of the Rotary Club of Birmingham. “We played them three times at Michigan State and beat them three times. That was a great national game, it creates fan interest and TV will always jump on those games.”

Among the other teams he’d like to schedule, Saban named North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Penn State, and Oklahoma.

Bring it Irish! I’m personally glad to see this type of mentality. Saban may not be aware of it right now, but we’re already scheduled to play Georgia Tech and Penn State in the future. Maybe that means he’ll be around for that long after all. I also love the Notre Dame smack talk too.

I’ll play you and your little dog too!

For Your Reading Pleasure

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Nick Saban’s salary. While I probably won’t be changing my opinion– at least in basic principle– I do think it is healthy for people to hear different takes on the topics of the day.

The first link is from The Sports Economist, a multi-blogger site. In this post, Phil Miller makes several different points. One stood out to me:

4. Saban’s high salary is *not* a sign of an unhealthy society. As I wrote in the earlier post, the diamond-water paradox applies. According to the paradox, water is necessary for life but diamonds are not, yet the price of diamonds is much higher than water. Understanding the solution to the paradox comes from understanding two things: 1. the value of any good is determined by the satisfaction consumers obtain from it at the margin; 2. the price of anything is determined by its relative scarcity. It’s quite possible for there to be quite a gulf between the two (the so-called consumer surplus).

Diamonds are more pricey than water because they are relatively scarce while water is relatively abundant. The price that people pay for diamonds is much closer to the marginal satisfaction they obtain from them while the difference between the marginal satisfaction obtained from water and the price of water is much greater. The fact that water is necessary for life and we can get it for a cheap price is a cause for celebration, not general alarm.

The same thing can be said about a collegiate education and football. The talent that Saban, Tressel, and other coaches have is relatively scarce. The Sabans of the world are even more scarce. On the other hand, the talent it takes to teach effectively, for example, at the collegiate level is more abundant. So the price of coaching talent is much higher than the salary obtained by most professors. But people obtain a lot more satisfaction at the margin from education than they do from football.

For a counterpoint in the Saban salary debate, we look towards The Sports Law Professor. While he understands part of the argument that the athletic department can technically be self-sufficient, he points out that there is more than meets the eye.