If I learn how to throw a football & hit people, can I make $1,000,000 a year?

he following graph originally appeared on my previous pog, in which I fell victim to a multi-paragraph verbal storm regarding the academic job market. But then I kind of thought the graph deserved its very own post because, let’s face it: something is monumentally f*cked-up when those who transmit prolate spheroids earn a bajillion times more than those who transmit intellectual power.

Still… once I do the math and realize that football coaches “earn” $2,896.73 per day (!)  to teach a team of wildebeests the most successful methods for whacking into each other and severely decreasing the team’s overall brain cell count, I think I’d be willing to sweat it out with the meatheads for, say, a week or so? One week with them would already guarantee me more than I make in an entire year with my fellowship (shoot me now). Plus, the coaches are kind of exempt from the brain cell reductions, right? From what I can tell, the worst violence that befalls a football coach involves a keg full of Gatorade being dumped on his head in the event of a super stellar win. And I could totally suck that sh*t up.

Especially if it were Grape Gatorade. 

Now, excuse me while I go fling my academic self off a building.