This post was written by Dan Tudor. He is the founder of Selling for Coaches, a training program that teaches advanced recruiting and communication skills to college coaches and athletic departments around the country. He will be blogging about recruiting training for Double-A Zone. Click here for more information about the company.

It's a heck of a lot of money, to be sure.

$35 million to coach Division I college basketball over the next several years. That's the deal that John Calipari signed with the University of Kentucky, leaving Memphis - Calipari's former school - wondering if they can find a man that can come close to duplicating Calipari's impressive 137-14 record in four years as their coach.

The contract, similar to several other big deals that other college coaches in basketball and football have signed in the last few years, has some people raising questions. Is it appropriate, especially in these uncertain financial times, for a college employee to earn an incredible sum of money just to coach at a place of higher learning?

Yes.

That's just my opinion of course, but it's as valid as any other contrary opinion that is currently circulating through the blogs and sports magazines. One writer on SI.com, the online home of Sports Illustrated, authored a piece entitled "Calipari Deal Sends Wrong Message in Tough Times".

The author, a national sports columnist for the Associated Press named Tim Dahlberg, makes several points in against such contracts: Other schools are forced to cut sports, many people in Kentucky are out of work and struggling financially, Kentucky is a state taxpayer supported school, which means that such a contract should not be justified.

I disagree.

Here are three reasons why...

Calipari earned it. In Division I college athletics, it's still a free market system: The big programs, with the big budgets, can hire the best talent and pay them the most money. Those positions are few and far between, and barely 1/10th of one percent of college coaches make the kind of money that Calipari is now earning.

Want to guess what Calipari had to do to get to the point in his profession when he would even have the chance to be considered for that kind of a contract? It would make most Americans' jaws drop: Family sacrifices that few would be willing to endure. Twenty hour workdays during the season. Public relations work during the off-season. All of which, mind you, is done without union protection or guarantees of future employment. For every Coach Calipari, there are fifty coaches who tried - and, for various reasons, failed - to demonstrate the same kind of leadership, organizational and coaching prowess that all of the high paid college coaches have demonstrated. And, lest you harbor any sympathy for the mistreatment that those fifty coaches endured, you should realize that the vast majority would sign-up to do it all over again (and whoever wants to give up their place in line, there are two hundred aspiring coaches ready to take their place in a heartbeat).

It's a fact of life: Larger schools have larger budgets. That kind of economic reality is being questioned not only in college athletics, but in our national political arenas as well. However, fans of college sports should not get lulled into the thinking that the larger school's budget advantage is "unfair". The SI.com writer, Dahlberg, laments the situation of Division II Kutztown University. On the same day that Calipari was signed to his big contract, Kutztown Athletic Director Greg Bamberger was forced to announce the elimination of two sports - men's soccer and the school's swimming team.

The elimination of sports because of tightening budgets is tragic. As someone who works closely with Athletic Directors and coaches around the country - many of whom are now close friends of mine - it is heartbreaking to see the cuts that some schools, like Kutztown, are forced to impose.

However, I would doubt that the Athletic Directors at those smaller schools would insist on a program at a competing athletic department contribute to a type of NCAA social engineering experiment to equal budgets across the nation so that each school could have the same number of sports, coaches and programs.

Most Athletic Directors I know accept the economic climate for what it is: A problem to be managed under their direction, using their training as administrators to gut-out a win for their department in the same way that Coach Calipari calls on every ounce of his years of coaching experience to pull out 137 wins in 151 tries these past four years. Good Athletic Directors are up to the challenge, as are savvy CEO's in the midst of leading their respective companies through some very rough times.

Calipari, and the success of Kentucky basketball, will bring in millions of dollars to the University. College athletics compensates student-athletes (granted, not to the degree that some would advocate) by awarding a free, or significantly discounted, college education at the Division I and II levels. It is, therefore, and easy argument to transfer to the coaches who are proven successes in their sports: They should be rewarded for the ancillary benefits that they bring to their respective institutions; primarily, fans who pay to see their teams compete and win, as and more student applicants who want to have a winning college team as a part of their college educational experience.

Take the University of Southern California, for instance. Many people forget what their football program was like prior to the arrival of head coach Pete Carroll; suffice it to say that Trojans' football was not a big draw to fill the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum, much less to a prospective student looking for a winning tradition on a Saturday afternoon. However, what happened the year after they won their first national championship should be evidence of the value of a great coach who turns a college sports program around: Applications for the university skyrocketed, and the team is now selling-out the Coliseum every Saturday they take the field.

Incidentally, the money that basketball and football programs bring in to their respective college athletic departments help fund the rest of the sports in the program, a truth that is confirmed on both large and small campuses that I visit in the course of my work with athletic departments and coaching staffs. For a program like Kentucky's, what they will pay Calipari should pale in comparison to the increased revenue the athletic department will have at their disposal if those hopes of a national championship are realized, both in tuitions today as well as alumni giving in the decades to come.

I understand the culture we live in now, and I see why some would try to tie it to the economics of college athletics. Many make compelling cases for sensitivity to the economic suffering that many around the country are dealing with, and it is certainly the safe opinion to harbor in today's climate of pitchfork-wielding masses who would seem to relish a more equal approach to awarding salaries in college athletics and in America's boardrooms.

However, I think those of us who understand the lessons taught through college athletics - that there are winners, and losers...that life isn't always fair...that all you can do is try your hardest and let the scoreboard take care of itself - should applaud these rare celebrations of excellence like Calipari. It should bring hope to every college coach - including those at Kutztown University and every other under-funded athletic department struggling with their budgets today - that athletics in America still rewards the winners who have sacrificed more than most of us will ever know, and have demonstrated that they are the best in their field.

The American dream is alive and well in college coaching and college athletics. Let's keep it that way.