List Of Highest-Paid Coaches In College Football Includes Two Names That May Not Belong
We've reached that point of the college football season where the list of the highest-paid head coaches in the sport is updated and released, which then causes fanbases around the country to argue that their team's head coach is grossly overpaid.
The argument is always on the basis of being overpaid, too, and never underpaid, given that every coach inside the Top 40 on the list is making north of $5 million annually.
USA Today updated and shared the list of the highest-paid coaches in college football on Wednesday, and here is how the Top 20 shakes out:
1. Kirby Smart - Georgia - $13.282 million
2. Dabo Swinney - Clemson - $11.132 million
3. Steve Sarkisian - Texas - $10.6 million
4. Lincoln Riley - Southern Cal - $10.043 million
5. Ryan Day - Ohio State - $10.021 million
6. Mike Norvell - Florida State - $10.0 million
7. Kalen DeBoer - Alabama - $10.0 million
8. Brian Kelly - LSU - $9.975 million
9. Mark Stoops - Kentucky - $9.013 million
10. Lane Kiffin - Ole Miss - $9.0 million
11. Elia Drinkwitz - Missouri - $9.0 million
12. Josh Heupel - Tennessee - $9.0 million
13. James Franklin - Penn State - $8.5 million
14. Dan Lanning - Oregon - $8.2 million
15. Brent Venables - Oklahoma - $8.152 million
16. Maris Cristobal - Miami - $7.783 million
17. Mike Gundy - Oklahoma State - $7.750 million
18. Luke Fickell - Wisconsin - $7.725 million
19. Jedd Fisch - Washington - $7.7 million
20. Lane Leipold - Kansas - $7.5 million
Outliers Among The Highest-Paid Coaches In College Football
The fact that seven of the Top 10 highest-paid coaches in college football make at least eight figures per year should catch the attention of every college football fan given that those numbers are borderline obscene, but there are also two names inside that Top 10 that stand out, and not in a good way.
It's not hard to make the argument that Mike Norvell of Florida State and Mark Stoops of Kentucky are the two most overpaid coaches in the sport.
Mike Norvell is having a terrible year at Florida State. (Photo by Don Juan Moore/Getty Images)
You have to give credit where credit is due, and Stoops, Norvell, and their agent Jimmy Sexton don't deserve criticism because they were able to finagle both schools into monstrous contracts.
With that being said, we can also look at their salaries and say that they're a touch too high.
Norvell signed his most-recent contract extension with the Seminoles in January 2024 after leading the team to an unbeaten regular season. His rumored flirtation with taking the Alabama job following Nick Saban's departure undoubtedly played a role in his lucrative deal, which again, is what the market dictated at the time.
However, if you take away Norvell's unbeaten season a year ago, this is a coach who went just 18-16 in his first three seasons in Tallahassee. You couple that with the fact that his team is the laughing stock of college football this season sitting at 1-5, and that direct deposit hitting Norvell's bank account has to send shivers down the spine of the Florida State athletic department.
Stoops signed his most-recent extension in November 2022, which has him tied to the program to 2031. College coaches signing deals of nearly a decade in length is absurd, but that's just the college football world we live in these days.
Mark Stoops led Kentucky to a road win over Ole Miss this season, but followed that up with a loss to Vanderbilt. (Photo by Justin Ford/Getty Images)
Stoops has one of the more interesting jobs in college football given that Kentucky is a basketball school. On the one hand, he deserves credit for making the Wildcats consistently relevant during his 11 seasons in Lexington, but on the other hand, paying a coach $9 million to be average to slightly above average on occasion seems like a bit much.
You can imagine that Kentucky could pay someone else significantly less to put together a similar resume to Stoops' - he's 76-68 overall and has had two 10 win seasons at Kentucky - but then again, college football coaches don't just grow on trees.
It's a safe bet that Wildcat and Seminole fans will agree their team's bosses are overpaid at the moment with Florida State having one win to its name and Kentucky fresh off of a home loss to Vanderbilt.