An article
came out this week stating the salaries of college
football coaches. The research was done by the
University of Marquette Law school. They were not
able to get the salaries from private schools but
got the records for public universities to be able
to determine the actual salaries of coaches.
This also
was done before the resignation of Urban Meyer.
Here are a
couple of things I found interesting. Out of the
eleven public institutions in the SEC, nine paid
their head football coaches over $2,000,000, with
Mississippi State and Kentucky being the
exceptions. There is also talk right now that
Vanderbilt will offer Auburn offensive coordinator,
Gus Malzahn, $3,000,000 to become their head coach,
and it is reported that Arkansas will increase the
salary of Bobby Petrino from $2,700,000 to
$3,560,000. That would mean ten of the twelve
schools in the SEC would pay their coaches over
$2,000,000 a season.
Now how does
that compare to the rest of the country? You have
to figure that three private schools pay their
coaches over $2,000,000: Southern Cal, Miami, and
Notre Dame. That would mean that, outside of the
SEC, there are twenty schools that pay their coaches
$2,000,000 or more. The highest paid coach outside
of the SEC is bowl-less Texas and Mac Brown at
$5.161 million. That compares to the highest paid
coach in the country, Nick Saban, at $5.997 million
per season. Note: do you remember when Nick Saban
was hired at LSU at the end of 1999 and was paid
$1.2 million for five years and he was called the $6
million man? I guess now he really is.
A couple of
schools that caught my attention are: Wake Forest
which pays $2.9 million, Rutgers which pays $2.0
million, and SMU which pays $2.1 million.. By
conference, the ACC has five, the Big Ten has three,
the Big 12 has four and the PAC Ten has two coaches
that make the list.
In the SEC,
Les Miles ranked third, behind Saban and Meyer.
With Meyer gone, Miles will move up to second at
$3,905,000. It will be interesting to see what
Florida will pay their new coach, Will Mushchamp.
It obviously won't be what Meyer was making, but
without Mushchamp having any head coaching
experience, will U of F put him over the $2,000,000
or $3,000,000 mark?