Do the paychecks of our coaches’ match the success of their respective teams? If you do your job well, you keep your job, right? The pressure of winning on coaches is a little different than what most of us face.

Whenever I do something wrong at my job, I don’t have to feel the pressure of heckling fans calling me all kinds of inappropriate names, but coaches usually do. Which brings me to my next question: do we put enough pressure on our coaches?

According to its Web site, APSU mentions being one of the “fastest growing schools in Tennessee.” After my fourth year at this school, attending multiple sporting events, I can tell you our pride in our sports is lacking. Maybe with the exception of basketball, our most successful sport, the support of our fans come in uneven portions.

The salaries of our coaches should be reason enough to pressure them to recruit better and lead their teams to being successful. Govs head football coach, Rick Christophel, the highest paid coach that isn’t Dave Loos, should be pressured the most right now.

The slogan for last season’s football campaign was “Return to Tradition.” With a base salary of $95,917.00, I find it essential that we pressure Christophel into not making last season’s effort a tradition. He probably gets paid more than your favorite professor. There are certain disparities here with our lack of care for the majority of our athletic department.

Our tuition helps pay for these sporting events. Besides being a big fan of sports, I know that’s one of my motivations for coming to a game.

Funds put into our football program and other sporting events can be a good start on a fans’ motivation. Strive to remain critical of something you pay for. ]The focal point of many thriving universities is their athletic program. Your reason for not supporting our teams may be that they are not winning. I ask you to look at the Southeastern Conference. While you do have teams like LSU, Florida and Tennessee that are used to winning, you still have teams with great community support that don’t do well.

Many students complain about never having anything to do on campus. In reality, there are many things that are going on. All things might not spark your interest; the opportunity is definitely there.

With that said, we have our bread and butter coming up, the basketball season. The Govs and Lady Govs are both coming off of successful seasons, both losing valuable players from prior years.

There is no reason our teams shouldn’t have our full support with our growing population. These coaches are getting paid quite a bit, let’s not let our money or their talents go to waste by sitting around.