By Zac Ellis

ACC Coastal Championship ring. Other side view. #GoHeels http://t.co/WiRGvTsOYP—
Jason Freeman (@uncfootball) April 30, 2013

Larry Fedora knew exactly what he was getting into. At the ACC’s spring meetings this week, the North Carolina head coach said he expected there would be critics of his decision to award rings to his team honoring their Coastal Division championship.

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Brock Berlin and Frank Gore were key players in the Florida-Miami rivalry that may be discontinued. (Bill Frakes/SI)

By Zac Ellis

Florida and Miami might have one of the more exciting in-state rivalries in college football, but that Sunshine State matchup might be coming to an end.

Miami athletic director Blake James told reporters at this week’s ACC spring meetings that no discussion has taken place with Florida regarding a continuation of the series, ESPN.com’s Andrea Adelson reports. James pointed to scheduling concerns as a potential obstacle in future meetings.

“I haven’t spoken with Jeremy or the University of Florida about future games and I don’t know how it would fit into their schedule or fit into ours right now. There hasn’t been any conversation and there isn’t anything on the schedule for the future.”

The two schools are slated to meet this season on Sept. 7 for the first time since 2008, and SI.com’s Stewart Mandel ranked the game as one of the season’s non-conference games to watch. The matchup  will wrap up just the second home-and-home series between the programs since 1987, when the schools snapped a streak of annual meetings dating back to 1938.

Florida already plays an annual non-conference matchup with Florida State, and the SEC’s proposal to move to a nine-game conference schedule could further complicate the future of the Hurricanes-Gators series.

Nick Saban makes $5.3 million per season, but his economic impact on Alabama is much greater. (Morry Gash/AP)

By Zac Ellis

Critics and fans alike have used many words to describe Alabama coach Nick Saban’s salary, which leads the nation at $5.3 million per year. But “modest” likely wasn’t been one of them — until now.

That’s how Forbes writer Tom Van Riper recently described Saban’s pay. The logic? Given the economic impact Alabama football has made on Tuscaloosa during Saban’s tenure, that price tag isn’t so bad. The Crimson Tide’s success has indirectly caused an upswing in university enrollment, faculty employment and athletics revenue.

“Powerhouse football is nothing new at the school, of course. But powerhouse football in the modern media age means, thanks to games beamed across the country on a regular basis, a national marketing platform unlike anything Bama enjoyed in Bear Bryant’s day.”

Saban has won three national titles in Tuscaloosa and compiled a 68-13 record since taking over at Alabama in 2007. The school’s revenue flow has increased accordingly: According to Van Riper’s data, taken from USA Today, Alabama recorded revenue of $124.5 million and a profit of $19.4 million in 2012, an increase from $67.7 million in revenue and $7.1 million in profit in ’07. The football program is the money-driver, accounting for around two-thirds of all athletics revenue and $45 million in profit.

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Ex-PSU president Graham Spanier made the most of any public college executive in the 2011-12 fiscal year. (AP)

By Zac Ellis

Universities may experience budget cuts and other belt-tightening initiatives in the face of economic hardships, but many college presidents seem to be doing just fine.

According to an annual report released by the Chronicle of Higher Education, former Penn State president Graham Spanier received the highest total compensation of any executive from a public college in the 2011-12 fiscal year

Spanier, who was forced out at Penn State in November 2011 following the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal, pocketed $2.9 million during the 2011-12 fiscal year. The amount included $1.2 million in severance pay and $1.2 million in deferred pay on top of his $350,959 base salary.

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Ex-Idaho head coach Robb Akey filed a lawsuit against the university on April 16. (Scott W. Grau/Icon SMI)

By Zac Ellis

A former Idaho football coach has filed a lawsuit against the school. Robb Akey, who was fired from his position as head coach last October, filed the suit on April 16 against the University of Idaho, the Board of Regents and the State Board of Education.

Akey was fired eight games into the 2012 season following a 1-7 start. The ex-Vandals coach says he is seeking proper compensation with the lawsuit. “All I’m looking for is getting the money I earned. I’m not looking for anything more than that. I just want a fair resolution,” Akey told KREM 2 News.

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SEC football coaching salaries are increasing at a rate 128.9 percent faster than those of instructors in the league. (AP)

By Zac Ellis

Salaries of college football coaches increase at a much higher rate than those of instructors at the same universities, a new study shows.

Even as many institutions of higher education fight through far-reaching budget cuts, a study by Inside Higher Ed shows that universities with the largest athletic programs are the driving force behind the lopsided trend.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the SEC leads the way in salary discrepancy. The league boasts about a quarter of the country’s 23 athletic programs where revenues actually outpace expenses. Its instructional salaries rose 15.5 percent between 2006-11 ($70,886 to $81,758); SEC football coaching salaries increased 128.9 percent over that same span ($3,147,149 to $6,928,989).

The smallest salary gap belonged to the WAC, “where football salaries rose 46.4 percent, from $1,370,332 to $1,819,845, and instructional paychecks rose 15.2 percent (a faster increase than several other conferences), from $65,038 to $76,533,” according to the report.

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By Holly Anderson

For The First Time This Year We Wish We Worked Offseason Weekends, Vol. 2: In which the President has been reading the message boards.

President Obama just referred to the University of Michigan as That School Up North.—
Kyle Rowland (@KyleRowland) May 05, 2013

President Obama gave Ohio State’s commencement address this weekend, and he adhered admirably to rivalry rhetoric but selfishly neglecting to issue an executive order awarding each of Ohio State’s victories under Urban Meyer to the SEC.

And you thought this was the weirdest thing at a North Carolina football game… (ZUMAPRESS.com)

Longtime readers will know how we feel about mixing politics in with our football,* but if we’re going to cover the shenanigans of grown-ass people going crazy over SEC football, it’s only fair to extend our gaze to the ACC as well. From a Treasury Department investigation into employee misconduct comes this gem:

An employee at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers international trade sanctions levied against other countries, reportedly used his badge and credentials to avoid arrest at a October 22, 2009 Florida State Seminoles vs University of North Carolina Tar Heels football game in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (North Carolina lost 30-27 after a second half rally by Florida State). He became angry when not allowed to enter the stadium while in possession of a prohibited alcoholic beverage and, after identifying himself to stadium security, became drunk and disorderly.

Have you considered, heartless stadium personnel, that he was perhaps there in order to levy some of those sanctions? And can you imagine if this game had taken place at Florida State? We can hear the outcry from UF and Miami fans now: “WE KEEP TELLING YOU TALLAHASSEE ISN’T REALLY PART OF FLORIDA.”

*Spoiler alert: We do not care for it unless it is really, really funny. As such, please keep the comments below light and frothy and not at all serious, in the spirit of the offseason. Our ban-button finger is well-conditioned for fall. Thanks so much. 

[HT: Megan Carpentier, whose site we were visiting because of this story about a town in Alaska that has a cat for a mayor.]

From the Wall Street Journal via Political Wire, here is a harbinger of terrible, terrible things to come during commercial breaks in the 2012 college football season:

“[ESPN] has struck a deal with a middleman that will result in more political ads appearing on ESPN programs, including NFL and college football games, in October and November–the critical period before the general election.”

Said one top ESPN executive: “There is ‘great demand’ for ad time from ‘political parties and the super-PACs.”

As we all learned in social studies, the three great dividers of the American electorate are religion, politics and college football. Religion gets to mingle with the other two to some degree, for obvious reasons, but what you never ever ever want to do is combine all three, most especially where large quantities of domestic beer are involved. College football is tribal enough by its very nature, and is perfectly capable of generating arguments that end in horrific displays of human cruelty on its own, thankyouverymuch. Now some suit has the bright idea to toss in ad breaks that will engender living room fisticuffs over wars, heathcare and education? Is there any way this doesn’t end in heartbreak, or in armbreak?

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Rodeo clown and devoted lying liarpants Craig James, whose campaign for Senate is still apparently a real thing, faces a bit of a Republican primary challenge today, where he’s polling at a robust 3 percent, a statistically insignificant but still LOLsome two percentage points behind “Undecided.” You know at least a hundred people, gentle reader, and we live in contentious political times: When was the last time 97 of them agreed on anything? Say this for the man Wikipedia insists is nicknamed “Mustang Breath:” He’s a true uniter.

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