The Chronicle of Higher Education unveiled salary information for 256 college presidents in fiscal year 2013 on Sunday, and it's an interesting list.
In general, high-level collegiate coaching pays better than high-level academia. The 50th highest-paid university president made $621,200 in 2013 (SUNY system's Nancy L. Zimpher); the 50th highest-paid FBS head coach made $2,001,250 (Kentucky's Mark Stoops). The outlier here is Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee. Gee and his famous bow tie made $6,057,615 in total compensation, nearly $700,000 more than highest-paid coach Nick Saban and astounding 3.7 times more than the second-highest paid president R. Bowen Loftin of Texas A&M. (Neither Gee nor Loftin are still are those same schools.)
Here's a look at the 25 highest-paid presidents or chancellors, compared with how those schools paid their football coaches. All coaching salaries courtesy of USA Today. (For any system chancellors, we took the coach from the flagship school within that system.)
* - system chancellor
Of the 23 applicable comparisons, the football coach had a higher salary than his boss across campus 16 times.
While acknowledging that market forces are what drive salaries on both sides of the university ledger, college football's salary structure follows a clearer path than the academic side. The highest-paid coaches in 2013 were employed by Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio State, LSU and Michigan. That's what you'd expect to see.
What I did not expect to see, however, is the University of Michigan's president one spot lower than the University of South Alabama, or the school president at the University of Texas at Dallas earning more than his counterpart at the flagship school in Austin.