BCS cartel can afford to pay for relevance

Google Maps tells us the distance between the campuses of UNLV and Southern California is 264 miles.

Reality tells us the distance between the two in football is that of Las Vegas and Shanghai.

Lane Kiffin hasn't coached a game for the Trojans and reportedly is making just less than $4 million in annual salary, because when you post a laughable NFL record of 5-15 with the Raiders and a dead-flat average one of 7-6 at the University of Tennessee, it's only right you make nearly as much as premier coaches who have done something.

But it's not on Kiffin to defend the number of zeros on his paycheck. The Trojans are paying him in the neighborhood of what Pete Carroll received for winning two national championships and seven Pac-10 titles because they can, because this is what college football has become.

A world of greed.

This is what happens inside the Bowl Championship Series cartel. A top program such as USC's spreads a bit of the wealth across its athletic department but returns most of it to the football program in hopes of getting bigger, stronger, better, richer.

Texas. Florida. Alabama.

All the same.

Kiffin isn't paid this much to coach. Look at his record again. The guy had two first-round NFL Draft picks last season, three of the first 59 selections, the nation's best defensive back and the fifth quarterback chosen, and he couldn't beat UCLA.

Kiffin is paid this much because USC thinks he is the best option at recruiting the most talent while hopefully not receiving many inquiries from those NCAA infractions officials who have made the Los Angeles school a second home of late.

This is how the arms race grows even stronger, why a school such as UNLV and others like it always will struggle to be relevant in football.

Yep, because the Trojans are paying Lane Kiffin nearly $4 million a year.

If you can't see how easily the dots connect, you haven't kept track on how out of whack collegiate athletics have become between the haves and have nots.

UNLV never will be in position to pay a football coach millions of a dollars a year. It's a public institution within a state whose tax base is getting worse by the minute.

Do you believe if conference expansion explodes as many believe it will over the next several months, a BCS league would look strongly at adding UNLV given how far behind it is financially in the most important sport?

Come on.

Bobby Hauck makes a base salary of $350,000 as the Rebels coach.

Monte Kiffin, Lane's father, reportedly could make close to $2 million as USC's defensive coordinator this season.

The assistant coach salary pool at Florida for 2010 is $2.66 million.

How does a school such as UNLV hope to compete?

"You can't," Rebels athletic director Jim Livengood said. "It's the old diminishing return argument. At some point, it's going to get to where it no longer makes economic or any kind of fiscal sense. Salaries like the one (being paid Kiffin) aren't good for UNLV or college athletics. In this kind of economic climate, how do you explain it? When is enough enough?

"It's pretty darn scary. If things happen with conference expansion as most expect, it could be even worse. We want UNLV to have the best coaches and to give the student-athletes the best experience possible and to try and be successful, but the perception is out there that money will buy our way to that level. Can you imagine a public institution in this climate trying to go down that path?"

Livengood has lived on both sides, of the gold dollar and now the copper penny. The men's basketball team at Arizona under his watch helped keep 19 other programs stable, so when it came time to hire a coach, he had no choice but to open the checkbook and pay Sean Miller $1.5 million annually. He couldn't risk a drop-off in basketball revenue, couldn't risk what that might mean to other Arizona teams.

His goal at UNLV is to eventually provide an athletics budget free of state money. That's reality around here.

Down the road some 264 miles, things are a bit different, where national championships in football are expected annually, where a coach who was a bust in the NFL and has won seven college games is making millions of dollars, where the arms race continues to grow and the cartel rears its ugly head.

Where the vein of capitalism has run amok.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618.