Coaching Trends: Gettin' Paid

Last night's championship game pitted two of the best coaches in the country leading their teams in a contest for the sport's biggest prize.  Those two coaches, Mack Brown and Nick Saban, are also now the highest paid coaches in college football.  This year, they certainly earned those fat salaries.  Mack Brown recently signed a contract extension making him the first coach to earn $5,000,000 per year.  That contract also provides for an annual $100,000 raise over the life of the contract.  Saban's most recent contract was for $4.7 million.  Does anyone doubt that Alabama's administration will top Brown's contract when Saban gets back to Tuscaloosa and talks to Jimmy Sexton?

All of that got me thinking about coaching salaries over the past decade and where we are heading.  In 2001, Steve Spurrier was the highest paid college coach with an annual salary of $2.1 million.  Only Spurrier and Bob Stoops made $2 million or more.  Mack Brown, by the way, made $1.45 million.  Today, twenty-five coaches make over $2 million a year.  In 2001, there were 22 coaches who made over a million bucks a year.  In 2007, that was the AVERAGE salary of a BCS conference coach.

So, in eight years, the highest salary in the country more than doubled from $2.1 million to $5 million.  If that trend repeats itself, in 2017, the highest paid college football coach will make $11.9 million.  I repeat, $11.9 million.  If you think that is crazy talk, I remind you that the competitive pressures of the SEC are quite possibly at an all time high just as its member institutions are about to reap an enormous increase in revenue because of a new TV deal.  Salaries are only going to go up.

Forget the economics of these deals, which I fully appreciate (the coaches make a lot of money because they generate a lot of revenue and good coaching talent is in short supply with high demand).  Think solely of the political pressure involved in a state university paying a football coach $10 million at a time of university budget cuts or state financial problems.  Is this trend politically sustainable?  Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has already publicly questioned the tax-exempt status of the NCAA and college athletic programs.  I can easily see other politicians joining Grassley's nascent crusade if coaches begin to be routinely paid like Wall Street bankers.  There will be a bunch of other concerns: upset faculty and university administrators, the heightened incentives to cheat, and even the pressure to allow the athletes to benefit from the athletic revenue just like the coaches.  None of this, I believe, is good for college athletics.  There's got to be a political ceiling on coaching salaries, but we haven't hit it yet.  What happens when we do?

Where are we headed with these salaries and is it good for college football?

Quinton