Moments after UCLA won the Pacific-12 Conference men's basketball tournament in March, coach Steve Alford and his players climbed a ladder, cut down the nets and took a piece of the nylon string as part of their respective, and very different, rewards.
The players got hats and T-shirts. Alford got a hat and a T-shirt — and notched $40,000 in bonuses. It added to a lucrative year for the new coach — $2.6 million in annual compensation from UCLA, along with an $845,000 signing bonus last spring to cover his buyout and taxes when he left the University of New Mexico.
Alford's players, by contrast, attend UCLA on scholarships that pay tuition, room and board but fail to cover more than $4,000 a year in living and other expenses, according to the school's most recent financial report to the NCAA.