Is John Brady Leveraging the N.C. State and Oklahoma Jobs?

Or does he just want what's right, relatively speaking, in relation to his peers in the SEC?

Read this and make the decision for yourself.

My guess is that if Brady were to toss his hat in the ring, he'd be eligible for the remaining high-profile jobs that are out there. My further guess is that LSU will take all steps necessary to ink Brady to a long-term deal.

It all begs the question, of course, whether at $715,000 per year (which, according to the linked article at espn.com makes him one of the lowest paid coaches in the SEC), he's underpaid.

I sincerely doubt it, even if when you look at his compensation relative to his peers, all of whom are overpaid.

Look, it's not that these guys don't deserve to earn a living, but I question any school that pays any coach more than its president, provost and deans of its schools. Sure, I'm barking at the moon, I live on Mars, what have you, but where are a school's priorities? What's more important -- filling a gym, or turning out graduates who can help better society because of skills they learned in college. Yes, of course, the twelve kids fortunate enough to play for a Coach K will learn lessons that will last them a lifetime, fine, but the last time I checked the term was scholar-athlete and not athlete-scholar.

Perhaps John Brady is underpaid relative to his peers. In his world, that's not good, because he's a great coach, he's a competitive guy, and he needs to get a certain level of satisfaction. In the world of the rest of us, he's getting paid almost three-quarters of a million dollars to coach a kid's game. Last time I checked, Baton Rouge hasn't imploded because neither its men's hoops team nor its women's hoops team didn't make it to the national title game.

Sure, people in various states derive certain amounts of pride because their home state's team achieves prominence at the national level. That, in and of itself, is a good thing.

But at what cost?