Salary info revealed for David Shaw and Pat Fitzgerald

Typically, the salary information for private school head coaches and athletic directors are not subject to the type of open records USA Today uses when the roll out their extensive salary database each year.

Salaries for positions at private schools like Northwestern, Notre Dame and Stanford usually come to light a few years later.

Over the weekend that time came for Pat Fitzgerald at Northwestern and Stanford's David Shaw, as Steve Berkowitz shared some salary information he uncovered on both.

Fitzgerald made $5.4 million in total pay back in 2020, federal tax returns show. His base pay was $4.1 million with $960k brought in bonus pay in 2019 after leading the team to the Big Ten title game, and $4.7 million in 2020 with no bonus money credited.

Former Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips, who is now the commissioner of the ACC, was credited with $2.4 million in total pay during his last season full year in Evanston in 2020. His salary leading the ACC is not known, but we do know that in 2018, Phillips was the second-highest paid athletic director in the country, behind only Notre Dame's Jack Swarbrick, and was the highest paid leader in the Big Ten, per this piece by SB Nation.

During the 2020 calendar year, David Shaw was credited with $6.15 million in total pay based on federal tax records that Berkowitz obtained.

In 2019, Shaw was credited with $8.5 million, which would have put him among the highest paid coaches in college football that season. According to Berkowitz, Stanford shared that Shaw's 2019 pay included over $2 million in retroactive salary and signing bonus that were unique to that specific year.