With three coaches now passing $10 million, why college football salaries keep rising

Just over 10 months ago, USA TODAY Sports made the following statement in the wake of contracts that Michigan State, Penn State, LSU and Southern California had just negotiated with their respective football head coaches:

"Even by the up-always-up standards of college football coaches’ compensation, the past week has redefined the top end of the pay scale in ways that seemed pretty hard to imagine even this past summer."

Another summer is not yet complete, and that sentence already has been rendered inoperative.

Over the past seven weeks, Georgia, then Alabama and, on Thursday, Clemson again have redefined the top of the market for coaches at public schools. It’s no longer $9.5 million, the basic amount that Michigan State worked out with Mel Tucker and LSU with Brian Kelly.

Try $10.5 million. That’s roughly the average pay, before incentives, that Kirby Smart, Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney are set to receive for this season, with Smart the low man at $10.25 million. (Hey, if you’ve only won one national championship, how can you expect to lead the pack? Wait, we’ll get back to that.)

For the 2017 season, Saban was paid just over $11.2 million, not including incentives. According to data compiled by USA TODAY Sports for 2006 through 2021, that had been the only instance of a college sports coach being scheduled to collect an eight-figure amount for one season – and it involved Saban getting a one-time, $4 million contract-extension-signing bonus.

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Adjusted for inflation, Saban’s payout for that 2017 season would be more than $13.4 million. So, he remains the king, then and now, although the amount that USC is paying Lincoln Riley after hiring him away from Oklahoma this past winter has not yet been subject to disclosure because USC is a private school. The same is true with Miami (Fla.) and Mario Cristobal, who left Oregon after last season.

Otherwise, here’s where things currently stand for the 2022 season, not including the value of personal air travel allowances, even if being paid in cash, or relocation bonuses:

• Saban: $10.7 million

• Swinney: $10.5 million

• Smart: $10.25 million

• Kelly: $9.5 million

• Tucker: $9.5 million

• Ohio State’s Ryan Day: $9.5 million annual rate that took effect July 1.

• Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher: $9 million

• Penn State's James Franklin: $8.5 million

• Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh: $8.05 million

Mel Tucker's deal led to salary explosion

The late-November contract spree began when Penn State announced a 10-year, $85 million contract with Franklin, who won a Big Ten championship in 2016 but otherwise hadn’t led the Nittany Lions to even a division title in eight seasons at the school.

Then came the biggest driver of the overall landscape: Michigan State’s deal with Tucker. He began last season with a head-coaching resume comprising a 5-7 season at Colorado, followed by a 2-5 pandemic season with Michigan State, which – after his one year at Colorado – had given him a six-year contract set to pay $5.5 million annually, more than double what he had been making with the Buffaloes.

Last season, as the Spartans started 8-0, Tucker started getting talked about as a possible candidate for what seemed likely to be very high-paying jobs at Southern California or LSU. Michigan State’s new athletics director, Alan Haller, didn’t want to see that happen. With help from donors, he put together a 10-year, $95 million package. Suddenly, Tucker’s pay was on par with that of Saban, who has seven national championships; Swinney, who has two; and Fisher, who has one and saw what had been a 10-year, $75 million contract with Texas A&M in 2018 extended back to 10 years and increased to nearly $95 million in September 2021.

While Fisher's mega-deal came first, Tucker’s agreement, in both years and dollars, became a benchmark.

When Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU, he and the school worked out a 10-year, $100 million deal that could be worth even more if he can win a Southeastern Conference title or what would be his first national title.

Ripple effects of historic seasons by Georgia, Michigan

When all of last season’s games had been played, Georgia had won its first national championship since the 1980 season and Michigan had won its first Big Ten title since 2004 and played in the College Football Playoff semifinals. As it stood in early January, Smart was set to make $7.2 million for 2022, Harbaugh $4.1 million under a contract extension in early 2021 that had cut his pay in half.

Based on what had happened on the field and off, those numbers weren’t going to stand. And when Harbaugh’s deal was re-done in February, with his pay for 2022 restored to $8.05 million, that finished setting the table for Ohio State coach Ryan Day. Sure, the Buckeyes lost to Michigan last season – but he had won the two previous Big Ten titles, and now he was going to be the conference’s fourth-highest paid coach?

Meantime, while provisions in Saban’s and Swinney’s contracts that called for renegotiation based on certain market conditions hadn’t quite been met, they were getting close. A new deal between Day and Ohio State in May – a mere seven-year arrangement that turned out to be worth just over $66 million – brought them closer. Then, on July 21, Georgia announced a contract with Smart that was set to have him making more money this season than either Saban or Swinney would. Alabama responded by putting Saban back in front of Smart. Clemson then put Swinney directly behind Saban.

The source of money for these larger contracts

So, where is all this money going to come from? College athletics departments are very good at committing to spend money that hasn’t come in yet, but that they know is coming. The SEC and Big Ten are headed toward huge TV-revenue increases in 2023 and 2024, respectively. An expanded College Football Playoff is coming in 2026, if not earlier, that will further create more revenue.

While athletes are making more and more from name-image-and-likeness deals, that money is not coming from schools – at least not yet. Pending court cases could change that, and companies and donors may choose to back athletes rather than schools. But companies and donors may see value in backing both, as Mat Ishbia and his United Wholesale Mortgage have done with Michigan State.

The Pac-12 Conference, which has been struggling on multiple fronts, has announced six new corporate-sponsorship agreements in the past six months and nine in the past 12 mon. Do any of these deals involve TV-rights type windfalls? No. But they show that there are still companies following traditional paths to reaching college sports fans.

The bar for college football salaries will keep going up

The college sports industry always seems to find ways to grow revenue or find new revenue. As Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., put it during a hearing on college sports in June 2021: "To me, there's a lot of money in sports, and there's going to be a lot more money in sports."

Unless Congress grants colleges some type of antitrust exemption, or maybe if a court case or some other decision changes how athletes are compensated, increasing amounts of that money are going to be paid to football coaches.

This season, if Auburn moves on from Bryan Harsin or Nebraska parts with Scott Frost, those schools could become market-movers, if not for Saban, Swinney and Smart, then for others. Auburn is set to pay Harsin $5.1 million this season, but in 2020, it was paying Gus Malzahn $6.9 million. Surely, its avid backers would find the right money for the right coach.

While Nebraska never has paid a coach more than the $5 million a year that Frost made from 2018 through 2021 (he’s at $4 million this year under renegotiated terms). However, the school never has been through a coaching search while receiving a full share of Big Ten revenue.

With the value of those shares headed much higher, coaches’ pay seems bound to follow.

Contributing: Tom Schad, Erick Smith

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why college football coaching salaries, led by Nick Saban, keep rising