The college football coaches making millions
Can you guess who is the highest-paid public employee in your state?
Lawmakers or other officials may come to mind, but likely not "football coach."
That's the case in Georgia. An annual Paste BN project reveals that University of Georgia football coach Kirby Smart earns the state's top-earning spot with total compensation of $13,282,580.
Smart has delivered national titles and built a robust program at UGA. But the optics — and rationale — for this number have been complicated by a rash of traffic-related incidents of varying significance involving Georgia football players that continued into this season; recent graduation rates that are among the worst in the country for a major-college team in any sport; and the underlying question of what responsibility lies with a man who’s likely now the highest-paid public employee in the country.
👋 Nicole Fallert here and welcome to Your Week, our newsletter exclusively for Paste BN subscribers (that's you!). This week, we talk with journalist Steve Berkowitz about the findings of Paste BN's annual investigation into college football coaches compensation.
Here are a few more headlines I've read this week from Paste BN:
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- Black women are grieving Harris' loss. Then they vow to keep fighting.
- Podcast: Why President-elect Donald Trump may never be sentenced in his New York criminal hush money case.
- Is fluoride in drinking water safe? What to know after RFK Jr.'s claims.
- Feeling lonely? Blame inflation.
The dark side of winning
Paste BN has tracked college coaches compensation since 2006. For Steve Berkowitz, the idea of a coach making up to $10 million seemed hard to envision back then. Now, there are multiple coaches making at least $10 million.
"There's doesn't seem to be a ceiling to this," Berkowitz said of the upward trend in coaches compensation. Paste BN's exclusive tracking of coaching salaries shows that Georgia's Smart is the first coach to earn more than $13 million in annual pay from a school.
Smart's salary is about $2.5 million more than Smart made from the school in 2023 and is about $2 million more than what Clemson’s Dabo Swinney is set to make as the second-highest paid coach in the country (just over $11 million). It is the largest gap between the nation's two highest-paid coaches in terms of recurring annual compensation since Paste BN Sports began its salary database in 2006.
"There doesn't seem to be any sign of slowing down because schools value winning football and they see a correlation between coaching and your ability to win," Berkowitz said. "People will outbid one another to retain or hire a coach who can win."
Other than Smart's meteoric rise, another surprise Berkowitz found in this year's project was the risks some schools and coaches took in drafting contracts. The University of Michigan and its coach, Sherrone Moore, were among those that started this season without a fully formed contract. Their interim agreement from when Moore was promoted to succeed Jim Harbaugh created ambiguities and ended up treating the coach as an at-will employee from late April until the parties signed a contract in mid-September. This was "unusual" Berkowitz said, to see a school willing to put down millions of dollars for a non-enforceable agreement. But if the coach brought wins, it would be worth it, he said.
This winning logic can have a dark side, though. Berkowitz said circumstances of UGA football "speaks for itself": Legal issues off the field facing players, from reckless driving to doomed academic performance document how factors that have nothing to do with football continue unchecked while the school continues to increase the pay at the top and get trophies. And "not everybody can win," he says, meaning many schools are shelling out major dollars without wins in return.
"Clearly the schools view this as a way to advance the cause of the university more broadly," Berkowitz said. It's important Paste BN dedicates resources annually to this project, he said, because it intends to hold the nation's top public employers accountable: "Paste BN has established credibility and a standard in this effort."
Read Paste BN's annual coaches compensation project
- The most underpaid college football coaches include three from Group of Five. Who are they?
- Podcast: It exorbitant college coach pay sustainable? Ethical?
- Lane Kiffin is among the college football head coaches set for big raises in 2025.
- Booming buyouts: The average cost of firing a college football coach continues to rise.
- The most overpaid college football coaches include two from SEC.
Thank you
This week and all weeks, I'm thankful for Paste BN's subscribers. Your support makes our journalism possible, whether it's an election or news from the athletic field. Thank you for supporting our journalism with your subscription. Our work wouldn't be possible without you.
Best wishes,
Nicole Fallert