Cost containment, long part of the college sports lexicon, is becoming a mission statement.</p><p>Cut the waste and tighten the belt, just like America.</p><p>Only there&#8217;s a bit of a perception problem here. Not everybody on the payroll is making a sacrifice.</p><p>High-profile coaches&#8217; salaries have never been greater. Every year brings another round of wage spikes, especially in football and men&#8217;s basketball, for head coaches and assistants.</p><p>Big 12 football coaches will earn an average of $1.8 million in 2009, a high-water mark. Kentucky hired basketball coach John Calipari for nearly $32 million over eight years. Every school year brings a new salary threshold.</p><p>Over the past few years, we&#8217;ve come to accept the escalation as the cost of doing business and the free market at work.</p><p>Even as the economy started to tank, high-level college sports remained such an entertainment priority that few outside of the high-ideal Knight Commission kicked up much of a fuss.</p><p>Hey, the superstar coaches &#8212; Bob Stoops, Mack Brown and Bill Self among others in the Big 12 &#8212; generate much more income than they make. Even a Big 12 athletic director, Kansas&#8217; Lew Perkins, ranks at the top of his profession&#8217;s salary scale. And he has elevated the Jayhawks&#8217; athletic program to a different financial level.</p><p>But as a financially challenging college sports year winds down, the message from colleges is they can&#8217;t have it all, and tough budget choices must be made.</p><p>Actually, the choice has been made. Schools are going to continue funding superstar coaches at the expense of items that don&#8217;t provide income.</p><p>Cost-cutting suggestions from recent annual spring meetings around the major conferences tell the story.</p><p>Items on the chopping block, either through national legislation or conference policy, include track regionals, foreign basketball tours, hotel stays for football teams before home games and reducing travel rosters and staff personnel on a basketball bench.</p><p>Many of those are luxury items, and the reductions look smart. But the expense is a drop in the bucket compared to salaries and scholarships, which typically represent half of major athletic department spending.</p><p>Here&#8217;s the perception, not to mention the mathematical, problem: Colleges are talking about dumping the other stuff that amounts to thousands to keep paying football and basketball coaches in the millions.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a difficult line presidents, chancellors and athletic administrators have to walk,&#8221; Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe said. &#8220;You depend on the revenue of certain sports, and if you don&#8217;t have quality coaches who continue to bring in that revenue, especially if you have a highly successful coach who is in demand, you&#8217;re caught.</p><p>&#8220;If you lose that coach, will a school suffer a revenue drop? And if I don&#8217;t pay this coach and lose him, does it signify that a school isn&#8217;t committed to a program? You could lose donations, ticket sales and television appearances, and that affects the other programs.</p><p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s a heck of a conundrum.&#8221;</p><p>Here&#8217;s another one. The Big 12 will distribute to its schools a record $130 million from television contracts, bowl and NCAA Tournament revenue from 2008-09. Yet the same schools are looking to the conference to support cost-containment legislation.</p><p>Earlier this month, the Knight Commission heard from presidents and current and former athletic officials, and reports from the front lines weren&#8217;t good. Penn State athletic director Tim Curley said he sees a reduction in Olympic men&#8217;s sports over the next three to five years.