Sometime in the 1980s, Malcolm Moran, then a reporter at The New York Times, was thumbing through his newspaper's archives, researching a story related to University of Texas football.

A clipping from the 1940s caught his eye -- "just two or three paragraphs, nothing very long," Moran said.

But it was a sign of what was to come, a trend already set in motion.

That clipping told a brief tale of former Texas football coach Dana X. Bible, who coached the Longhorns from 1937-46, and how some people were in an uproar because he made more money for coaching the football team than the university president made for guiding the school.

So when the subject of John Calipari's eight-year, $31.65 million deal to coach the University of Kentucky basketball program was brought up yesterday, Moran said it was understandable that some might see a financial imbalance.

"That old clipping about Dana X. Bible just tells me that this has been going on for 50 years and, really, the only thing that has changed now are the zeroes and the commas," said Moran, now the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society at Penn State University. "Salaries of coaches were an issue back then, just as they are now."

Calipari's deal, which made him the highest-paid college basketball coach in history, was thrust to the forefront on ESPN, Bloomberg and other media outlets, not just by the size of his salary but also that dollar amount coupled with the current state of a fragile economy.

A Moon native, Clarion graduate and former Pitt assistant, Calipari was introduced in Lexington yesterday as the new head coach at one of the nation's most prestigious and successful programs.

His base salary at Kentucky will be $400,000. The remainder of his guaranteed contract is funded by radio, TV and other sponsorships and Southeastern Conference revenue-sharing funds. In addition, the university paid a $200,000 buyout to the University of Memphis, where Calipari had been coaching since 2000.

The deal Calipari signed topped that of University of Florida coach Billy Donovan, who had been college basketball's highest-paid coach, receiving a deal worth about $3.5 million annually after winning consecutive national championships in 2006 and '07.

Mitch Barnhart, the University of Kentucky athletic director, had no trouble justifying Calipari's lofty salary.

"First, I'm always proud to have the opportunity to discuss how this athletic department is one of the really small number of programs that is self-funded," Barnhart said. "We do not use any state appropriation or university funding to pay our coaches. Except for his base salary of $400,000, the bulk of this compensation is derived from our multimedia rights contract that includes radio and television agreements, other sponsors and conference revenue sharing.

"The marketplace that we operate in, to be the premiere basketball program in America, you want the best coach, you must pay a premium price. If done correctly, the investment in a coach will pay for itself and yield returns for the overall program in general. We've got a lot of sports programs, 22 of them, that depend on our men's basketball programs and our football program to make sure they have an opportunity to exist."

Locally, Pitt men's basketball coach Jamie Dixon made $1,296,482 in salary in 2007, plus $39,690 in employer contributions to benefit plans and $13,227 for expenses.

So, what did Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson think of Calipari's contract? He likened it to the guaranteed $32 million, eight-year deal Alabama signed Nick Saban to in 2007.

"It's reminiscent of what we went through when Nick Saban got that contract from Alabama," Pederson said. "But it didn't lead to any dramatic change in the landscape."

Pederson added that in compensation for coaches, Pitt tries "to pay people fairly and aggressively."

But Calipari's hiring comes at a time when students at the University of Kentucky are being asked to pay more for their education. Last month, the board of trustees at the taxpayer-funded school of slightly more than 25,000 students approved a 5 percent tuition increase for next school year.

It also is a trying financial climate for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, whose unemployment rate jump from 8.8 percent in January to 9.2 percent in February, the highest it has been since the rate was9.2 percent in December 1986.

The financial strain on the state even found its way to the governor's mansion in Frankfort. In December, Gov. Steve Beshear took a 10 percent salary cut, from $124,384 annually to $111,945.

In 1999, Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College in Massachusetts, wrote the book "Unpaid Professionals: Commercialization and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports" and has been an outspoken critic of what he believes is a disproportionate salary structure in collegiate and professional sports.

Zimbalist sees Calipari's salary as tremendous overpayment by the university.

"It is morally improper and economically improper," Zimbalist said. "The reason this is happening is that the market value is not true and it is trumped up and artificial. The producers, the players in this case, do not get paid, and these universities benefit from tax preferences from the IRS. Also, there are no stockholders banging down the door when something goes wrong. The levels that a coach like this makes are simply not congruent with the moral or economic salary structure."

And Zimbalist believes universities should be taken to task for paying what he views as exorbitant salaries.

"These athletic departments are cut off from any meaningful supervision and constraint from the universities they serve," he said. "These salaries, such as the one Calipari is making, are simply not economically justified."

At his introductory news conference yesterday on Kentucky's campus, Calipari was asked about wins and losses and said: "I'm not going to make promises. I'm not going to do that. But I'll tell you what, we're going to run a program that we're proud of."

Just how much that is worth is the bigger debate.