'Dolphins fans, feeling jilted as their coach absconds to Alabama, can take solace knowing he left us for higher cause. The gargantuan salary Nick Saban will collect from his new employer is all about furthering ``educational purposes.''

It's the law. Spelled out in the federal tax code. Teachers throughout Alabama must be dancing in the streets, knowing that their flagship university has earmarked $32 million in salary and another $4 million in incentives (not to mention the $4 million buyout to get rid of its previous coach) toward educational purposes.

Most of Nick's salary will be funneled through the 'Bama boosters club, technically a 501c (3) charitable organization. Roll Tide boosters get to write off their contributions on their tax returns. For instance, when one of Alabama's well-to-do fans leases one of 123 skyboxes in Bryant-Denny Stadium, he's able to write off 80 percent of the $42,000 annual fee as a charitable donation. All that drinking, cheering, cussing in fancy digs -- that's as good as a writing a check to the March of Dimes.

FANS CONTRIBUTE

Dolphins fans not only have themselves a losing, coachless team, but, as taxpayers, they get the added satisfaction of subsidizing their ex-coach's new salary.

Critics of big-time college sports have been warning about an ''arms race,'' with universities stealing coaches away from other universities with ever-escalating salaries. College football and basketball coaches (making $1 million, $2 million, even $3 million a year) were becoming some states' highest-paid public employees. Including Florida.

But the Saban hiring takes the arms race to another level. Suddenly, universities are hiring away top-paid head coaches from professional teams, despite that nettlesome tax code requiring colleges to use their exemption for ``educational purposes.''

Of course, one primary ''tax-exempt purpose'' listed on the NCAA's federal tax returns has been to ''retain a clear line of demarcation between intercollegiate athletics and professional sports.'' The Saban hiring establishes a ''clear line of demarcation'' by flat outspending the pros.

College jock factories blame ''market'' pressures for coaches' ever-crazier salaries. Not hardly, said Andrew Zimbalist, the Smith College sports economist and author of books on the relationship between public money and big-time sports. (The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on the Sports Business was published in October.)

LOWER OVERHEAD

He called the college market ''very skewed.'' Professional teams work under real market pressures and stakeholder expectations. Besides, they have to pay their players. Big-time college football programs, Zimbalist said, have operating budgets a fourth the size of a typical professional team. Yet, as of Wednesday, college coaches -- charity cases under the federal tax code -- are on their way to comparable, or better, pay.

Not that the corruption of college sports by big money is anything new. In 1929, the Carnegie Foundation Report on Collegiate Athletics warned that commercialism, ``more than any other force, has tended to distort the values of college life.''

The college coaches' salary arms race has caused a few congressmen to question why taxpayers should subsidize one university's football program at the expense of another. The Saban hiring will raise even more bothersome questions. But campus stadium skyboxes come with private bathrooms, wet bars and considerable political clout.

The tax loophole might be insane, but congressmen do enjoy watching college football in luxurious comfort with fat-cat contributors.

The only change likely to come of the outrageous Saban deal will be the size of other college contracts.

Just see what happens when rival coaches learn how much more Nick made when he quit the pros and went off to do charity work in Alabama.'