What bothers me more is that a coach who is responsible for a non-academic activity and for a team that is smaller than most classes at IUPUI would earn more money than most faculty members, and that she would have a contract that allows her to earn three years of pay after the university determines that her services are no longer wanted.
A professor at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis notes the strangeness of a fired basketball coach getting $300,000 in severance (the local newspaper has had to file a complaint with the state for release of records, since IUPUI sees no reason to explain to the world why it has done this). The professor wonders why athletics “loom larger than the central mission of the campus.”
The answer to this is clear: Athletics is the central mission of the campus.