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Amateur Athletic Programs Don't Pay Coaches $15 Million to Not Coach

Les Miles's buyout might be the most striking example of college football's transformation into a quasi-professional league, but it's hardly the only one.
Crystal LoGiudice-USA TODAY Sports

After a 7-3 start to the season, LSU is reportedly on the verge of firing coach Les Miles. The news comes as a bit of a shock, since Miles is the winningest coach in school history and has the No. 1 recruiting class in the country coming in next year.

This isn't a case of the athletic department struggling to sell tickets, and Miles is not a coach consistently turning in mediocre seasons. This is simply a case of rich boosters wanting more from their program.

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Schad: Les Miles will likely not return. Schad's source 'in Louisiana, we expect to compete for national championships. He's not doing that'

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome)November 23, 2015

Miles is competing for championships, though. He was in the national title game four years ago and is consistently in the SEC race. His current stretch of three losses is his worst ever, so it would be ludicrous to pretend this season is the norm. Miles's biggest problem is that he's not Nick Saban, who preceded him at LSU, but matching the success Saban has had at Alabama, a school with more history than LSU, is an unreasonable expectation.

READ MORE: Million-Dollar Bonuses on the Line for Bowl-Bound College Coaches

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of this whole situation—and the reason we know the boosters have a hand in it—is that not only will LSU owe Miles a $15 million buyout but, as the Times-Picayune reports, the money isn't even considered an issue.

The $15 million dollar buyout clause in Miles' contract will not be a hindrance for TAF, the athletic program's powerful booster club that funds a lot of the athletic programs for LSU, according to the source. "The money is there," the source said.

A booster club paying $15 million for a pretty good football coach not to coach sounds pretty insane. There are much better ways to spend that money. Crazier still is that this is going on while LSU itself is in deep financial trouble. The school was nearing bankruptcy earlier this year, and cuts to higher education across the state keep coming.

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LSU's athletic department, however, is thriving. It ranks sixth in USA Today's school revenue database, and brought in $133.7 million last year. Even in a college sports system that vastly exaggerates its expenses, LSU can still report an $11 million profit—and that doesn't even factor in a booster club that can cover everything from facility construction costs to, apparently, coach buyouts.

LSU's athletic department operates completely separate from the university, and its financial health does not rely on the university's financial health. But in college football, where programs are supposedly tied to universities, what are LSU boosters doing giving this kind of money to the athletic department for a silly cause when the university itself is in dire need of donations? Just what you'd expect, mostly.

It's because the Tigers are really a professional team that just happens to have its name tied to a university.

Pretty much this. LSU is a pro team with a college problem — Pod KATT (@valleyshook)November 23, 2015

Miles's $15 million buyout might be the most striking example of this phenomenon, but it's happening all over the country. Even smaller schools are paying big money to keep their coaches. And as wins (and their attendant gate receipts) become an all-consuming mania for programs, the "student" half of "student-athlete" falls by the wayside. North Carolina got slapped with NCAA violations for bringing athletes to campus who couldn't do their schoolwork, then having others do their work for them. Athletes are routinely clustered into certain majors, regardless of how that might affect their lives after graduation, so as not to distract them too much from their real (and unpaid) jobs.

College athletics is a business, with the university as a necessary byproduct to ensure athletic departments don't have to pay their labori.e., the athletes. The NCAA's longstanding argument is that sports are just part of the overall college experience. While that may have been true in the past at LSU and its peers, and may still be true at Ivy League schools and some others, it's clear that academics and athletics are worlds apart at most Division I schools.

LSU is broke. The LSU Tigers most certainly are not. Regardless of the university's financial situation, the money will always be there to win on the football field. That's the mark of a quasi-professional team.