Before Northwestern fired him, ex-coach Pat Fitzgerald was due major raise in 2024

Former Northwestern University football head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s contract with the university shows that the school was willing to allow his compensation to be determined by the football-coaching pay decisions of other Big Ten Conference schools, some of which have athletics budgets that are among the largest in the nation.

Fitzgerald's pay was scheduled to be adjusted in 2024 and 2027 so that he would be no worse than the fourth-highest-paid football head coach in the Big Ten. That's according to the contract, a copy of which was filed as an exhibit to the lawsuit that Fitzgerald filed Thursday against the university in connection with the school’s decision to fire him for cause following an investigation into hazing allegations within the football program.

As a result, had Fitzgerald not been fired by the university this summer, he would have been headed toward a pay increase effective Jan. 1, 2024, that likely would have taken him from $5.65 million annually to at least $7.6 million. That amount likely would have been even greater had Michigan State not fired Mel Tucker for cause last month – a decision that Tucker is contesting. And it’s unclear how the Big Ten’s impending expansion would have impacted Fitzgerald’s pay.

During a news conference Thursday announcing the lawsuit, Fitzgerald’s lead lawyer Dan K. Webb said $68 million “would have been the remainder of (Fitzgerald’s) contract,” which had been set to run for another 7 ¾ years from his firing date in July through March 31, 2031.

“If they had just kept him on the job like they should have, that’s what they would have paid him,” Webb said. “And he’s entitled to that $68 million.”

Another of Fitzgerald's attorneys, Leigh A. Frederick, said in an email to USA TODAY Sports: "Our $68 million number includes Mr. Fitzgerald’s remaining salary (including his scheduled raises in 2024 and 2027), retirement benefits, and bowl bonuses based on Fitzgerald’s past performance in bowl games."

Contracts between private schools and their employees rarely become public because private schools are not subject to open-records laws and, according to attorneys who have negotiated them, they often include confidentiality provisions. The contract filed with the Fitzgerald’s complaint is marked "Confidential" on each of its nine pages.

Fitzgerald’s scheduled pay for 2023

The 10-year agreement, dated Jan. 18, 2021, came after a pandemic-shortened season in which Fitzgerald led Northwestern to a 7-2 record, an appearance in the Big Ten championship game and a bowl victory over Auburn. Those achievements only added to the former Wildcat player's legacy as "Mr. Northwestern," as the school's 2022 football media guide put it.

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The agreement says that upon execution, Fitzgerald’s “Guaranteed Annual Total Compensation” will be $5.65 million. Due to budget impacts of COVID-19, the parties agreed that his pay would remain $5 million from Jan. 1, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2021. Then, for Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2023, his annual pay would be $5.65 million. As consideration for Fitzgerald’s “assistance during the Covid-19 period,” he was to receive two payments of $325,000 – one on Jan. 31, 2022, and one on Jan. 31, 2023.

Determining Fitzgerald's precise position in the Big Ten football head-coach pay scale for 2021 is difficult because, like Fitzgerald, other coaches were taking pay decreases due to athletics departments' financial issues amid the pandemic. In addition, around the time Fitzgerald signed his new terms, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh's pay was being cut from roughly $8 million to $5 million. But Fitzgerald was likely third, fourth or fifth in the Big Ten at that time, according to USA TODAY's annual football head coaches' pay survey.

Big Ten pay scale set up big raise Jan. 1, 2024

The agreement says that effective Jan. 1, 2024, Fitzgerald’s annual pay “will be adjusted as necessary to ensure that it does not rank below the thirtieth (30^th) percentile (4/14 in the current Big Ten composition) in Guaranteed Annual Total Compensation provided to other Big Ten head football coaches or $6.30 million, whichever is higher.”

The adjustment was to be made using data effective on May 15, 2024, then paid retroactively. While unusual, this type of provision is not unique among football head coach contracts. Alabama's contract with Nick Saban and Clemson's with Dabo Swinney include similar market-rate look-ins designed to protect their pay positions within their conference and/or nationally.

Assuming no head-coaching or contract changes by the Big Ten schools with the highest-paying contracts -- and based on data gathered by USA TODAY Sports for its newly published annual survey of football head coaches’ compensation -- for Fitzgerald to be at least the fourth-highest-paid coach in the conference, he would have to be paid more than Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell, who is set to make at least $7.6 million as of April 1, 2024, in forms of pay that Fitzgerald's contract says would be used for comparison purposes.

Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Penn State’s James Franklin and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh are each set to make at least $8.2 million in 2024.

Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin each had athletics operating revenue of more than $150 million in the 2022 fiscal year, according to the most recently available financial reports they filed with the NCAA (Ohio State and Michigan each reported more than $210 million). Northwestern had just over $105 million in athletics revenue in fiscal 2022, according to data the school provided to the U.S. Education Department under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA). The EADA data is compiled under a different methodology than the NCAA’s, but it is the only source of information about private schools’ annual athletics revenue and spending.

The Big Ten is set to add the University of Southern California, UCLA, Oregon and Washington this summer. How – or whether – Fitzgerald’s pay potentially would have been impacted by that is unclear. But it is likely that USC’s Lincoln Riley is making more than $7.6 million (his compensation has not yet been made public through the university’s federal tax records, which are required of all non-profit organizations and generally are the only way private schools’ compensation information becomes public). In addition, Oregon’s Dan Lanning’s pay is set to increase to $8.2 million on Feb. 1, 2024.

Fitzgerald’s deal with Northwestern provided for another automatic adjustment similar to the 2024 arrangement, effective Jan. 1, 2027, based on Big Ten schools’ data effective on April 15, 2027.

What else was in Fitzgerald’s contract?

Fitzgerald was scheduled to be eligible for a bonus, based on a percentage of his annual salary, if Northwestern played in a bowl game. The details of that were set in a separate exhibit to the contract that was not included among Thursday’s filings.

Also, the contract called for Northwestern to pay the yearly premium for a term life insurance policy, with Fitzgerald’s estate as the beneficiary, and a disability policy covering “an amount up to the remaining salary in the Contract Term.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pat Fitzgerald was due major raise in 2024 before NU fired him