I dont often give ESPN credit for much, and I have seen similar comparisons in the past regarding salaries of top coaches but this article and its interactive features does a pretty remarkable job of showing across the United States how many states have their top paid public employee as either a football or basketball coach. They also go on to show how much the Governor of the state makes and the median household income of each state as well for comparison.
Key Takeaways -
- 39 of 50 states top paid employee is a public university head coach of either football or men's basketball.
- Surprising to me, the only ACC state where the highest paid public employee isnt a coach is New York.
- 12 states have a basketball head coach as their highest paid.
- The four head coaches in the Basketball Final Four combined make more than all 50 Governors combined
Anyway, Just something interesting for you to click through. The numbers arent completely shocking because we see these contract details all the time but that doesnt mean you wont find something to be amazed at.
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/19019077/highest-paid-us-emp...
Comments
Lolz at Mendenhall's contract
$1.65M per win. What a bargain!
cant remember...is that a step up or down from timecop? what was he paid per win?
We value spectator sports more than, you know, anything else.
Is there a problem here in need of a solution?
As a citizen: YES
As a CFB fan: I don't know what you're talking about.
Yes, it is actually pretty F'd up. Sad really.
Not until fans are lined up outside of city hall to pay $50 a head to watch those public employees work.
I disagree with you. I will leave it at that.
It's free market economics. Plain and simple.
you may have the last word.
Though technically public employees, coaches' salaries don't really come from taxpayer money. Athletic fees/athletic department revenues and boosters pick up the bill. I just think it's funny when people point out these statistics because there's this huge caveat here.
That's a very good point.
Still, we as a society reward people associated with sports and entertainment handsomely compared to how we reward people involved in other endeavors. To counter-balance that, there are a lot of tangible and intangible benefits to college athletics.
It's worth noting on occasion, and then forgetting about.
Part does, all coaches get an official state salary that comes out of the state funds. That figure for Mendenhall is his entire pay including supplemental from other sources. He really made $500,000 in 2016 from the State of VA which is supposedly the same as Fuente. The highest paid from state funds in 2016 was VCU BB coach Will Wade at $650,000.
So the data in the article is hogwash (for VA is "Hoo-wash" - and that's some nasty stuff!!)
I guess I'm kind of over these comparisons. Sports coaches aren't really a type of employee who can be compared to other state employees. Their salary is extensively funded by private donations, and in some cases 100% by private donations.
And it's one of very few jobs where you are judge on your performance for 12 out of 365 of work, effort, and preparation you put in year round. And it's not just your boss who judges you, people openly clamor to have you fired if you even slip up slightly at your job.
What's surprising about it? The only FBS programs in the state are Syracuse, Buffalo, and Army, and Buffalo is the only one that's a state school.
The most surprising thing about NY is that their highest-paid employee is an anesthesiologist at Stony Brook University Hospital, at $673,600. Would have expected either a surgeon or University president.
You have to remember that Syracuse is a private school as is Duke, Miami, Wake Forest and Boston College. As a result they don't have to release private pay information. I think the ACC has more private schools than anybody else as a P5 conference.
But Gottfred at NC State being paid more than Roy Williams was a surprise and helped explain why he was canned.
Got it covered.
True Dat. But I was also listing some of the other private schools in the ACC which is pretty cool.
It was also the reason that Syracuse was able to travel to UNC, NC State, Wake, and Duke over the past 2 years. The New York Governor had stated no state funds for travel to NC due to HB2.
Way to go Texas! Charlie Strong is the highest paid. That's gotta be a kick in the nuts for Herman.
This was based on pay in 2016. Are you surprised that UT-Austin pays more for their head coach than Houston does?
The highest paid in TX, LA, NC, and OR are all people who don't work for the state any longer. Also, I picked the wrong field. All of the states that don't have a head coach as highes paid, have a doctor of some sort as highest paid.
The chart lists the highest paid state employee in 2016. Doesn't matter if they were fired in 2016.
Also, you'll find that the highest-paid state employee in Alaska is in the oil industry, rather than a doctor.
So far I haven't seen (nor expect to) see any hot take reactions about how grossly overpaid coaches are, but to cut the head off of that chicken before it starts squawking, they are the equivalent of being in an active upper management position of a company (football team) that generates, in some cases, well over 100m in revenue every year. It actually makes sense, based on how much money these teams can generate, for a head coach to be paid handsomely for directly impacting the product generating that kind of money. You can bet your ass if I was under that kind of pressure I'd be demanding a large salary to justify the amount stress and work with comes with being in that position.
Agreed. Football goes far beyond just the sport. Think about the economic implications of VT's football program, or really any other major college football program for that matter. The amount of money the sport brings in for the school, the local businesses, hotels, etc. is massive. The sport is insanely popular right now, and coaches' salaries are the result of the current market for the best available talent in the industry. There are some outliers, certain programs with deep pockets throwing absurd amounts of money at coaches and inflating the averages, but if you want to compete at the highest level, you have to be willing to pay for talent. It's an incredibly demanding job. From the actual coaching aspect, to the non-stop grind of traveling for recruiting, to hosting camps, to media availability, to speaking events, and so forth. It never stops, so considering the financial impact that football programs make, I have no problem with letting the free market work here.
I see a few comments saying that private funds exclusively pay for coaches salaries, which is why this is a non-story. I'm not 100% sure this is correct. I remember a recent interview with Whit where he said he takes pride in the fact that our athletic department runs completely in the black without needing to dip into public funds, but that this absolutely isn't the case at all schools. While the talking point may be that the coaches themselves have their salaries paid privately, if the Athletic Department is taking public funds at all, its showing the coaches are getting a salary that's inflated beyond what they can afford, forcing the school to dip into public funds.
So while the talking point is good, I'm not so sure its completely valid here. Sure, we might be a different case here at VT, but it is a bit disingenuous to whitewash this as a non-issue when there are public universities taking public funding to run their athletic departments.
When the Richmond Times-Dispatch likes to put out their list of state employees' salaries each year, they make a big deal about how much the people at the top make. But they always sort by total salary instead of state salary.
Looking at the 2015 list, President Sands is 5th on the list of state employees with $717,500. However, $323,122 of that does not come from the state. So, he should be put on the list as $394,378
I've never been able to find the VT coaches on the list. Meanwhile, Timecop and Bronco show up with only their base salary of $383,000 and $500,000 respectively. That's a little different than trying to compare Broncos $3.3M total to the governor's salary.
Just read that and laughed out loud that someone would actually pay that guy that sum of money to come up with #hardthingstogether
I'd like to see a comparison on how much each of these schools are drawing from public funding to support their athletic department. For example, if you have a school that pays all of their coaches from the private donations but has so little left over its drawing millions in public funding every year to keep things afloat, then its more than a little misleading to pat yourself on the back for your privately funded coach.