Forbes must not like Michigan football

Since when does "not have to recruit" = an economic argument?

"Gets to kick Urban Meyer's ass at Ohio State so hard that the change falls out of his pockets."  

There.  That's an economic argument.

He said "marginal benefit" at some point, that's it. And I'm pretty sure to figure out someone's marginal benefit you need to know their preferences to begin with. Maybe Jim likes recruiting and the extra stuff that comes with college football? I doubt it, but it's possible. In that case, a better argument would be the benefit of chasing a Super Bowl win vs. a college national championship. Even that comes down to preference, but it's an easier assumption. And even that needs to be weighed against the wage difference between M and an NFL job.

tl;dr: since it's impossible to get inside JH's head, articles like this are meaningless.

Time is certainly a sunk cost, though it is not a fixed cost. So the time spent recruiting could/would be considered as part of the rational economic calculus in choosing between the two alternatives, college or the NFL. So the author is not totally stupid.

But for anyone to assume there are not comparable trade-offs with an NFL job is just wrong. The time spent analyzing potential draft picks is probably equal to or greater than the time spent recruiting. Plus, UM recruits itself. If Hoke could succeed in recruiting here with his comparatively poor track record, JH could probably pull in top 5 classes without ever leaving Ann Arbor...

Quite the economist, mentions marginal benefit. While, I'm sure he has all the qualifications. An ECON 202 student could have wrote this garbage. What if he actually values Michigan more than the NFL. They should wrap that around their econ degree. I can dig back into my Econ 202 notes and write blah blah Fallacy of comp, blah blah blah, inverse means blah blah fallacy of division.  

As an economist, he knows as much about the NFL as he does about opening a can of soup.

To illustrate the point, there was a physicist, a chemist, and an economist stranded on an island.  A can of soup wash ashore but they have no way to open the can.   They put their brains to solve the problem.

The physicist say, "We can drop it from the top of tree over there until it breaks open."

The chemist says, "We can build a fire and put the can in the flames until it bursts open."

The economist say, "Come on guys, doing it your ways, we would lose most of the soup. Let's assume we have a can opener."

I agree that college football is like the minor leagues.  No question.  But who in the world hasn't wished at some point in their careers that they could go back to college?  Hell I wish that every damn day!

The fact of the matter is he may make less money at Michigan but he'll be the king of the program (and probably campus too).  At an NFL team there's at least 2-3 players that get more publicity and hold more import in a franchise.  He'll encounter the same resistance from some players that don't like his approach (all NFL teams have those prima donnas) that he allegedly gets in San Franciso.  And depending on the franchise a head coach has at least 2 senior managers (owner(s) and GM).  

At the end of the day, this will be a change-of-lifestyle decision.  I may be ignorant of the world but I made this same kind of choice and it was the best decision of my life.  Maybe he'll be smart enough to do the same....

EDIT:  This was meant as a reply to Brodie

If you put it that way, it would seem JH would prefer the NFL, then.  He doesn't want to putz around with anything, he wants to coach and win.

Unfortunately, his boss is probably patting him on the back for successfully trolling the Michigan fanbase. 

I liked the paragraph he threw in there about how the Michigan fanbase is "dismayed" by Ohio States success. Uh, no. We're dismayed that our program has been horseshit for the last 7 years. OSU being successful is the norm.