USA Today Updates Coaches Salary Database

Oftentimes the highest paid state official is going to be the football or basketball coach for a university. To which the state of Idaho, and Boise State, are not immune. Harsin makes $1.6 million/year while the Governor, Butch Otter, makes $124,436.

USA Today has updated its database of college coaches salaries. And with that some interesting results.

While the database is incomplete with private schools not necessarily disclosing everything about the contracts, we get some ideas about where these coaches stand.

Bryan Harsin is 70th on the list. Which is ahead of exactly one—ONE—Power 5 school: Cal’s Wilcox.

From there we can go through a laundry list of coaches that are way overpaid in relation to the results on the field.

Lovie Smith at Illinois with a cool $5 million. I know he brings NFL caché but that’s about it. Certainly doesn’t come with a winning record (he’s 7-21).

Texas Tech’s Kliff Kingsbury. I don’t know how, or why, he’s still there.

Oregon State is paying Jonathan Smith $1.9 million. The jury is still out on whether or not he’s going to be successful, but it is Oregon State so I am not sure the folks there even care.

Randy Edsall at UCONN:

Either UCONN caved on a lot of incentives so he wouldn’t leave again or they weren’t too worried about having to pay any of the incentives. Despite all that: yeah, he’s overpaid.

Your turn

In a lot of cases, you can’t really blame some of these coaches moving up the food chain. What do you think?