... Saban had three years remaining on his Dolphins contract at about $4.5 million annually. The Alabama deal will guarantee him $4 million a year for eight years. He can also earn performance bonuses of $800,000 a year in bowl-game bonuses.

Though the full contract details have yet to be reported, based on other Division I-A compensation packages, one can assume that there will also be other bonuses, free use of a car or two, free country-club memberships, a heavily subsidized mortgage, upward of $1 million in severance pay and a handsome pension, among other perquisites.

In short, a university outbid an N.F.L. team for a head coach. But Saban’s record after two years in Miami was an uninspiring 15-17....

...[C]ollege athletics are not supposed to be run according to the rules of the marketplace. They are supposed to be run according to the norms of the university.

Athletic departments should not be able to have it both ways: either they are part of academia and are treated as nonprofit institutions, or they are professional enterprises, whose players are paid a salary and covered by workmen’s compensation, and they pay taxes like other business entities.