Columbia Sports Journalism

Calipari and Kentucky were brought together at last. His new contract, according to university documents, included a country club membership, two new cars, event tickets, and $31.65 million (this sum does not include performance based bonuses) over the course of eight years. Calipari also signed a two year extension to the contract that keeps him in Kentucky until 2019 with similar incentives.

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When Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on January 3rd, 2007, hundreds of strangers, most of them adorned in crimson, were waiting outside the small airport to greet him. They cheered wildly when his plane touched down and then formed a throng, multiple layers deep, surrounding him as he disembarked. They were there to welcome him, praise him, touch him; anything to be close to the man who had come to save their beloved, and recently struggling, University of Alabama football program.

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In the fall of 1968, Duke’s Academic Council—the university’s equivalent of a faculty senate—convened an ad hoc committee to explore the financial and moral well-being of the school’s athletic program. The inquiry arose from concerns over the athletic department’s $500,000 annual deficit, but its goals were loftier. “We hoped we could reconstitute athletics to be what it could be, [so it] would not dominate the scene like it does today,” says retired Duke Sociology professor Jack Preiss, who was among the committee’s five members.

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James Franklin, a football coach, will be, by far, the highest-paid public employee in Pennsylvania. Penn State said its new head football coach would be paid $4.5 million per year for the next six years. Franklin will easily earn more money than the university’s new president-elect Eric Barron and Governor Tom Corbett combined.

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In January, Strong left the University of Louisville to take over as Texas’ head coach. He signed a five-year contract with a starting salary of $5 million. He will receive a guaranteed $100,000 bonus each successive year. He can also earn a maximum of $900,000 in bonuses in 2014, a number that will rise slightly each year.

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Ferentz has led the Hawkeyes to two Big Ten championships and a victory in the 2010 Orange Bowl over Georgia Tech. For his efforts, Ferentz’s salary is among the highest in college football. His total compensation was $3.985 million in 2013, according to the University of Iowa’s public records department. Ferentz is the highest paid employee at the University.

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Although a loss to eventual tournament champion Connecticut during this year’s NCAA Final Four ended the top-seeded Gators’ season abruptly, the regular season was a success. It included a record for longest winning streak in UF history (30 games), another for most wins in a season by any Florida team, and only the second most in the SEC (36 games), and the feat of becoming the first Southeastern Conference team to complete an 18-0 regular season.

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Less than a mile from the medical school in downtown Louisville is the newly built KFC Yum! Center: an estimated $238 million dollar arena, home of college basketball’s most valuable team worth $39.5 million, according to Forbes magazine. Inside, the arena boasts 72 luxury suites that cost from $75,000 to $95,000, four meeting rooms with a total square footage of 33,926, and a seating capacity for more than 22,000.

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It took 58 minutes for Clemson University’s Board of Trustees to make Chad Morris the highest paid assistant coach in college football. The vote, held during a meeting of the board’s compensation committee on Feb. 1, 2012, was unanimous. The new contract gave Morris, Clemson’s offensive coordinator, a base salary of $1.3 million per year. Under his old deal, which still had three years to run, Morris made $450,000.

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The NFL and thousands of former players agree on the concussion suit

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