2009 NCAA Football Coach Salaries
July 31, 2009 by Allison Boyer
Filed under Football
Earlier today, I reported on a story involving UCLA’s coaches and their salaries. Both head football coach Rick Neuheisel and the school’s basketball coach have volunteered to reduce their salaries to help relieve the state and school budget. Like many major college football coaches, Neuheisel makes over a million, plus gets bonuses for doing well.
Image: sxc.hu
But there are many coaches who make even more. It’s no surprise that USC’s Pete Carrol tops the list, making a base salary of $4.4 million. Here’s the rest of the top ten:
- Pete Carrol, USC, $4.4 million
- Charlie Weis, Notre Dame, $4.2 million
- Nick Saban, Alabama, $3.9 million
- Bob Stoops, Oklahoma, $3.8 million
- Les Miles, LSU, $3.8 million
- Jim Tressel, Ohio State, $$3.5 million
- Urban Meyer, Florida, $3.4 million
- Kirk Ferentz, Iowa, $3.03 million
- Mack Brown, Texas, $2.91 million
- Bobby Petrino, Arkansas, $2.9 million
Overall, there are nearly 70 coaches who make over a milion. You can see the complete list at the Orlando Sentinel.
Urban Meyer was given a raise this year for his contract extension. It is worth $24M over 6 years. This puts him ahead of Saban now.
If every college started at a base salary of 1$ Million and added the bonuses based on team performance, they could still have around 2$ million extra dollars every year, which could be used to expand on one of the educational branches of the school.
Now I realize why many teams like LSU,Texas,Oklahoma,Ohio State, and Alabama tend to “run up” the scores on “weak teams” they schedule . The coaches know that these high scores are “poor sportsmanship” but they want to appear as though they are “all powerful” but in the end they are simply protecting their “paychecks” and usually they “choke”. It was refreshing to see a coach with class at Miami, not run up the score on Oklahoma when they knew they had the win. If it would have been Oklahoma, they would have pushed in the td. No class…
My comment is not to support these unbelievable salaries for a “coaching” position on principal… but to bring some light to “why”. If you look at just this years Top 20 as of right now… 8 out of 10 coaches have their teams in the Top 20 and all 3 of the top 3, Florida, Texas, and Alabama are on the list. These coaches year in and out are in the Top 20. They are the best at what they do and they have tons of money behind them to make it happen. College Football is big big business. The Revenu generated by the Football programs is astronomical. Unlike many Corporate Jobs where the CEO’s just write blank checks to themselves regardless of performance these Coaches have to perform or they are replaced.