There is a fascinating series of articles published on USA Today that contain salary information for FBS (Div I-A) coaches and assistant coaches. Through a survey process, they gathered compensation info for coaches and have put them in a sortable database by school and conference which reveals some very interesting (though not always surprising) information. The data on assistant coaches is particularly interesting - I've seen head coach compensation lists many times but assistant coach info is less available and you could argue is more important to a program.
Of course I dove right into the Virginia Tech, ACC, and comparison info to see the landscape we are dealing with. This post has some of that info.
First off, the comprehensive nature of the study allows it to make sweeping observations, most of which are not all that surprising. For example, the fact that salaries continue to go up. There are now 37 coaches that make over $2m / year and another 56 that make $1M / year. In 2006, those numbers were 10 and 42 respectively.
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More interesting to me is comparing compensation information for coaches between conferences, as it varies greatly. For example, here is the compensation info for the head coaches in the ACC:
Bobby Bowden, Florida State - $2,500,000
Paul Johnson, Georgia Tech - $2,300,000
Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech - $2,100,000
Butch Davis, North Carolina - $2,100,000
Al Groh, Virginia - $1,875,000
Ralph Friedgen, Maryland - $1,750,000
David Cutcliffe, Duke - $1,500,000
Randy Shannon, Miami - $1,500,000
Jim Grobe, Wake Forest - $1,200,000
Tom O'Brien, N.C. State - $1,100,000
Frank Spaziani, Boston College - $1,000,000
Dabo Swinney, Clemson - $1,000,000
Compare that to the head coach compensation list for the SEC:
Urban Meyer, Florida - $4,000,000
Nick Saban, Alabama $3,900,000
Les Miles, LSU - $3,751,000
Mark Richt, Georgia - $3,096,576
Bobby Petrino, Arkansas - $2,858,000
Houston Nutt, Mississippi - $2,509,000
Gene Chizik, Auburn - $2,050,000
Steve Spurrier, South Carolina $2,031,500
Lane Kiffin, Tennessee - $2,000,000
Rich Brooks, Vanderbilt - $1,617,517
Dan Mullen, Mississippi State - $1,200,000
Which set of schools invests more in their football program? What a school pays their head coach I'm sure is indicative of what the invest in other things, like facilities, recruiting, and assistants. You can see that mid-level ACC schools are competing for the same head coaching talent as the Vanderbilt's and Mississippi State's of the SEC.
Virginia Tech Assistant Coaches Compensation
Speaking of assistant coaches, here's what is most interesting about this database. Frank Beamer's $2.1M salary is well know and I've even blogged about it before. Assistant coach compensation speaks to longevity and the quality of your staff, and is reflected in the figures as well. Again comparing the SEC vs the ACC, a quick run of the numbers shows that the SEC pays the assistants an average total payroll of about $2.06M per year. Several schools pay their assistants $2.5M total, and Tennessee pays their assistants a whopping $3.325M / year.
For the ACC, the number is more like $1.8M per year (note that data was not available for BC, Duke, and Miami). Thus the ACC is playing compensation wise with about 1 less top level assistant per team than the SEC.
Here is the lowdown for Virginia Tech:
VT Coaches Compensation
You Hokie fans are smart, and you can make your own conclusions, but here is a few:
- Not shown here but Virginia Tech pays their assistants more than any other ACC school
- Frank Beamer certainly rewards tenure, as the long standing coaches are paid the most (true in most occupations)
- Bud Foster compensation reflects his performance as a VT assisstant. He makes over 40% more than any other VT coach
- You can't search/sort by this directly in the database, but Bud also seems to be paid well as an assistant when compared to assistants at other schools. There are some very high profile assistants like Monte Kiffin (Tenn), Will Muschamp (Texas), Jimbo Fischer (FSU) that make more than him (some a lot more).
Who on this list is overpaid? Who is underpaid?
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