Politics as Usual by Jim Baron

Even in these inflationary times, the term “a million dollars” still packs a wallop.

That is especially so when that phrase appears in a sentence describing an individual’s annual salary.
I have run across such a phrase in such a sentence a few times in the past several weeks as I have followed the biggest news story in the state of Rhode Island. The biggest news story in Rhode Island, of course, is not the several hundred million dollars the state is in deficit. Nor is it the simmering controversy over illegal immigration that every day threatens to reach and exceed the boiling point.
No, the biggest news story in Rhode Island is the naming of a Providence College basketball coach. 
And in most of the articles and many newscasts about it, there was that sentence, with that phrase.
This guy Keno Davis (I’ll leave the lame jokes about his first name to others) is coming to coach the P.C. Friars and is going to be paid more than a million dollars a year to do so.  Say it out loud to your self: A million dollars a year to coach a college basketball team.
It is one of those things you already vaguely know about in general — sure, big-time college hoops coaches make astronomical salaries — but it becomes more real somehow when you see that the little school in your state is going to fork over a million bucks a year to the guy walking up and down the sideline yelling at referees.
The guy is going to be drawing Xs and Os on a chalkboard; this isn’t rocket science. How do I know it isn’t rocket science? BECAUSE WE DON’T PAY ROCKET SCIENTISTS A MILLION BUCKS A YEAR. That’s how I know.
Yeah, yeah, he is also responsible for recruiting and alumni relations. But still! Nobody is getting cured of cancer here.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against P.C. or the Friars. I was just a little kid when my dad took me to Alumni Hall for my first Providence College game, too young to appreciate seeing Jimmy Walker out on the floor, but P.C. has always kept a special place in my sports fan heart. Seldom was I more torn than when P.C. went up against my alma mater, Syracuse, in the 1987 Final Four, but deep down I was hoping the Friars would win (they didn’t).
I know Providence College didn’t create this system. Travis Ford, the UMass coach who turned down the P.C. coaching job turned around and accepted a $1.3 million offer from Oklahoma State. This is someone who isn’t going to shoot a basket, or put a single point up on the scoreboard and no paying customer comes to a college basketball game to watch the coach, with the possible exception of Bobby Knight because he might do something obnoxious or outrageous.
So yes, this stuff happens, but I’m sorry, it demonstrates that something about our values as a society is seriously and fundamentally messed up.
In the mission statement on its Web site, Providence College asserts: “The College actively cultivates intellectual, spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic values within the context of the Judaeo-Christian heritage. These values are nurtured by the unique tradition of the Dominican Order which emphasizes quality teaching and scholarship.”
Into which of those values does a million-dollar basketball coach figure?
If the school were to pay a six-figure salary to the basketball coach — $100,000 a year — what could the other $900,000 be used for. What do professors make at P.C.? How many deserving, capable students could get a scholarship for an education their family otherwise couldn’t afford? What would the tuition be if some of the athletic mega-dollars were plowed back into academics?
Am I wrong to think some soul-searching is in order here?
I absolutely have nothing against people named Jim Baron being paid generous salaries. I wholeheartedly endorse and encourage that concept.
But should the basketball coach at URI (alas, no relation) be the highest paid person on the state payroll at a time when the state is in a genuine financial crisis?
I know this stuff about big money and sports is nothing new. Back in 1930 when the country had been plunged into the Great Depression, someone asked Babe Ruth, who was then being paid $80,000 a year by the New York Yankees, why he should make more money than President Herbert Hoover. The Babe’s answer? “I had a better year than he did.”
I admit I have no solution to offer to address this situation, as it is the result of market forces at work.
But as Bob Dylan said: “When something’s not right, it’s wrong.” And this just isn’t right.

A road by any other name
I was taken aback Saturday by all the hubbub on The Call’s “Off the Web” about the proposed renaming of Route 146. I never imagined the idea would ignite such impassioned response.
Tell the truth: When was the last time you heard anybody call that road “the Eddie Dowling Highway”? I would wager there are a great many area residents, particularly any under 40, who have NEVER called Route 146 the Eddie Dowling Highway or heard it called that.
Everybody calls it Route 146.
And if Sen. Mark Cote and Blackstone Valley Tourism Council chief Bob Billington get their way and the General Assembly officially dubs it “the Blackstone Valley Heritage Byway”, do you know what everyone is going to call it then?
That’s right, they are going to call it Route 146.
That said, the whole idea of naming buildings and highways and other stuff after prominent people is so they and their work will be remembered decades after they are gone. So kids in school will be made to look up, or at least Google, Eddie Dowling 25, 50, or even 100 years after he died. If you don’t believe me, ask Alan Shawn Feinstein.
To discard the name simply because many people have forgotten or were born too late to know the person sort of defeats the purpose. How many Rhode Islanders would know about Sen. Theodore Francis Green today if there weren’t an airport named after him?
Before the name of the Woonsocket-born Broadway actor, director, composer and producer is stripped from history in the name of tawdry tourism marketing, Billington and Cote should ask themselves when was the last time they called Route 6 the Grand Army of the Republic Highway. Enough said.