Coaching salaries

[kramer]

Texas Football Coach Mack Brown's reward for leading the Longhorns to the Rose Bowl was a 10-year contract worth more than $22 million.

 

Texas A&M rode a fast start into the Cotton Bowl, and Coach Dennis Franchione picked up an extension and a pay raise. Franchione was already under contract through 2010 and making $1.7 million a year.

 

"Given the market that we're dealing with right now, and the number of schools who've come after Dennis in the past," A&M Athletic Director Bill Byrne said, "I wanted to make sure that he knew we wanted him to stay here."

 

Hiring college football coaches is high-risk, high-reward. The desire to field a monster football program that keeps the turnstiles spinning and the donations flowing has athletic departments piling on the cash. The schools also walk a tightrope, trying to balance the university's educational mission and fiscal responsibility.

 

Texas and Texas A&M believe they have their men and are paying to keep them.

 

When Nebraska hired Bill Callahan in January 2004 to replace Frank Solich, Callahan's six-year contract was said to be worth $1.5 million a year.

 

Other institutions are in hot pursuit and keep raising the ante on coaches' salaries.

 

Like Bob Stoops at Oklahoma and Pete Carroll at Southern California, Nick Saban turned LSU's program into national champions almost overnight. LSU reaped record attendance and revenue, set in motion ambitious facility improvements for football and other sports and increased its athletic budget to $48 million. The football program has become, next to the State of Louisiana, the biggest cash benefactor for the university, LSU Athletic Director Skip Bertman said.

 

For those reasons, Saban made $2.3 million last season and would have made $2.4 million next season had he not left to become head coach of the NFL's Miami Dolphins.

 

"Saban and Pete Carroll and Bob Stoops have changed the terrain," Bertman said.