I have an inexplicable fondness for college ‘football’, but I’m worried about what will happen to the economy Sunday if this NY Times report is correct.

If the [LSU] Tigers win and claim the Bowl Championship Series title, Saban will be paid one dollar more than the highest-paid college coach in the nation, according to an incentive clause in his contract.

Since Saban is a college coach, it seems he must be paid a dollar more than he is paid. Which can only happen if a dollar is worthless, which I imagine would be rather disasterous for well-established economic relations.

There are a few potential ways out of this problem.

First, one might argue that the above reasoning depends on Saban having a finite salary. If his salary is infinite, then one could argue that very loosely speaking he is paid a dollar more than he is paid. But believing this probably depends on confusing cardinals with ordinals, and in any case having infinite amounts of money sloshing through the system really can’t be good for inflation. So let’s not take that option seriously.

Second, Saban could be fired immediately so that the initial premise, that he is a college coach, is broken. This would be a rather ungrateful reaction to the guy who just won you a (share of the) national championship, but it might be in the best interests of the world economy.

Third, LSU might get beaten. I quite like LSU though, largely because they host my favourite ethics conference, so I don’t want this outcome if it can be avoided.

Obviously this is all meant to be something of a joke, because one presumes that the quantifier domain in Saban’s contract is meant to only include other coaches. Even on that interpretation, as soon as one other coach gets the same clause we could be in trouble. And given how hard it’s been for Nebraska to lure a big name coach, I would not be surprised if they do offer such a clause to prospective candidates.

Thanks to Invisible Adjunct for the original link.