The annual bible of FBS coaching salary information has been released by USA Today, with an all too familiar face at the top.
But before we get into the finer details, let us be the first, on behalf of the entire nation, to thank everyone at USA Today who was involved in compiling all of this information into one usable database. Great job fellas. Thank you, on behalf of all of us that will bookmark this page and use it for the next year.
With that said, not surprisingly, Nick Saban tops the list of coaches with an annual total salary of just over $7,087,481 million a year. Michigan's Jim Harbaugh comes in at #2 at just over the $7 million mark as well, followed by Urban Meyer, Bob Stoops, and Jimbo Fisher to round out the top five.
Interestingly enough, Mark Dantonio, who ranked second last season at $5,636,145 following a nice win in the Rose Bowl, can be found all the way down at #21 this season.
The top 15 can be seen below, and you can take a closer look at the coaches annual salaries and their bonus information by following the respective links.
Here's a deeper look at some numbers we found interesting:
-The highest paid non-Power Five coach is still Tommy Tuberville at Cincinnati at #50. His $2.2 million salary is the same from last year's numbers when he ranked #44.
- Scott noticed this from the bonus section:
-The lowest paid coach from a Power-5 conference is Kansas' David Beaty, who makes $801,169 and won't even be able to hit the million dollar mark with bonuses (maxes out at $925,000). - Steve Berkowitz, the man behind the research, notes that there are 34 head coaches making at least $3 million this season, which is way up from where it was in 2010.
- Missouri's Gary Pinkel collected seven different bonuses last year, totaling almost an additional $1 million. If he earned every single bonus, he would have made an additional $1.85 million.
-According to Berkowitz's research, of the 94 FBS head coaches returning to the same program, 75 of them received at least one bonus. The median payout of that group? $94,000.