USA Today released their annual review of coaching salaries today. This is always fun because it reminds you that though you're one hundred percent sure that given a year or two of study you could easily run a football team with greater competence and results than [NAME REDACTED], he's still the one who made a grand total of 1.5 mil last year pre-tax, and not you. Don't think about jumping off that balcony: this is an office park, and you'll only break an ankle and embarrass yourself that way.
Nick Saban's salary shouldn't surprise you if you've seen the stupid shit people in Alabama spend money on in person. This is not a point of debate: no state boasts more lift kits and chrome on trucks with overdue car notes. (Just listen to the ads on Finebaum: it is now an exclusively liposuctio and fraud-based economy.) Nor is Mack Brown's $5 mil, nor Meyer/Stoops/Miles trifecta of $4 millionish salaries, nor Kirk Ferentz's perpetually surprising $3.7 mil salary.
These are the surprising ones:
- Jim Grobe gets $2.9 mil a year at Wake Forest. Jim Grobe's agent is a goddamn genius.
- Turner Gill's net $2.1 mil salary came at the cost of $700 grand or so per victory this year.
- Ricky Bustle's buyout at UL-Lafayette for a $226K salary could have been done in scratchoffs
- Gary Patterson is being stolen for $1.6 mil annually at TCU.
- Conversely, Dabo Swinney is stealing $1.7 mil from Clemson a year.
- Gene Chizik makes $3,500 in non-university compensation in addition to his salary. In contrast, Saban takes in $830K in non-university compensation. Someone get Cubist Kiffin some Golden Flake ads NOW.
- Saban isn't the leader in non-university compensation, however. That would be Tom O'Brien, whose work as the living sponsor and embodiment of milk and its health benefits earn him $887,500 in non-university compensation.
It's all fascinating, especially the part where you read that Robbie Caldwell's contract is listed at "NA" because Vandy is not obligated to report their coaches' salaries, but we all know it was just paid in pork rinds and duck calls.
*Miles will get one dollar more next year than the highest paid coach per his contract. You are not the biggest Alabama fan in the world: Les Miles is.**
**A one-time modification pending a 2008 championship, which did not happen.
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