The University of Michigan athletic department employed 344 people in the 2015-16 school year, according to state records. The number might be higher by now, but either way it’s up considerably (26.5 percent to be exact) from as recently as 2011.

USA Today released its annual college football coaching salary database and there’s been plenty of attention and hand-wringing over the compensation of one of those employees, Jim Harbaugh, who is getting $9,004,000 this year, the highest in the sport.

How, exactly, the argument goes, can college sports cry poverty and fairness when one guy is making that much as the actual players are limited to tuition, room, board and a fairly humble stipend that was only pried loose after much tumult and litigation?

The movement may be noble – to share the wealth with workers, in this case the players. The point, however, is generally lost.

The focus shouldn’t be on Harbaugh, per se. Instead it should center on some or even many of the other 343 of his co-workers in Ann Arbor. Good and talented people, one and all we’re sure, but they represent, in ever growing numbers, the National Collegiate Athletic Industrial Complex that finds ways to spend money on themselves before popular football teams like Harbaugh’s Wolverines can even earn it.

Perhaps only Nick Saban and Urban Meyer should care about Harbaugh’s compensation package, which dwarfs theirs by $2 million and $3 million respectively. Here’s guessing their agents will care, and the $10 million barrier will soon be breached.

If you’re trying to reform college athletics, which has seen revenue spike exponentially thanks mostly to soaring media deals, expanded stadiums and corporate sponsorships, then chasing Harbaugh is Fool’s Gold.

Fact is, he’s worth every penny and probably many more. He’s also the product of a free-market place. His success is a reward from supply and (NFL) demand. If you don’t think a football coach is worth the cash (and schools certainly do), recall that Michigan went through a prolonged period of mediocrity (seven of eight seasons) until Harbaugh arrived. In his second season, they are No. 2 in the polls.

He’s behind only Saban, who inherited an Alabama program that went 41-55 from 1997-2006 and saw the one moderately successful coach from that era, Dennis Franchione, leave for the supposed greener pastures of Texas A&M.

Jim Harbaugh has Michigan on course for a Big Ten title and a spot in the College Football Playoff. (Getty Images) More

Since Saban arrived, Alabama has gone 100-18 (with six of those defeats his first year) while winning four national championships, expanding its stadium and donor base and becoming the signature powerhouse of the sport.

Saban, Harbaugh and the others earn their money with relentless work. It’s unlikely any one of their players would honestly complain that they don’t deserve their pay, seeing their talent and tenacity up close.

They just aren’t the problem. The mentality of college sports is.

In athletic departments, every penny football earns must be spent and spent quickly on anything but additional scholarships for non-revenue sports, the raising of the athlete stipend or the relaxing of name and likeness restrictions for players that would allow them to earn their own, third-party income.

Not sharing the increased revenue is how an athletic department grows by more than a quarter in half a decade. Or how over a seven-year span the number of Michigan athletic department employees making six figures went from 30 to 81.

Michigan isn’t alone here. It’s the norm. This is how it is at nearly every major athletic department in the country. More money is coming in, mostly via television deals and, in the case of the Big Ten and SEC, conference-run networks that amount to a de-facto tax on states with league members.

Yet, more teams in more sports aren’t being created (or it’s rare). And more scholarships aren’t being offered to the ones that previously existed, allowing the wealth to be spread to more athletes and more families.

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