Time for Ohio's cash-strapped universities to cut assistant football coaches

Start downsizing football positions

Re "There just isn't that much belt to tighten," March 17: I found it ironic that in the article about universities having to cut programs in order to save money, no mention was made of any of them considering cuts to their athletic departments. 

Does a university football team really need 14 or 15 assistant coaches (running back coach, strength coach, defensive coach, etc.) when they have a head coach making over $2 million a year?

Why is the head coach getting paid that high salary if they need all those assistant coaches? It seems he should be doing a lot of that stuff himself. Think of all the money that would be saved by eliminating a lot of those positions and salaries.

Also, does a large school like Ohio State University really need an athletic director?

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It seems that a program that has been going on for 50 or more years can probably do things on its own without needing to pay another person $300,000 or more per year to direct the operations; the athletic department coaches should be able to get together and run the programs themselves.

Also, does an athletic department really need a compliance director, an NIL coordinator and other similar jobs? The athletic programs should be able to do all of that stuff without having directors telling them what to do.

An argument for justifying the high salaries is "that is what they would make in the private sector." I say call their bluff. There are a lot more high school and college teams in existence than in the professional sports world, and I'm sure there are hundreds of high school coaches who would be happy to do the college level jobs for five or six times less the salary being paid now. 

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 Maybe I'm wrong and die-hard fans will disagree with me, but I think some universities should have the courage to give it a try.

I think it is terrible that coaches are getting paid more than the president of the United States, who I feel has a much more important job.

Joe Koldys, Columbus