Coach Salaries, Visualized

Hey there and thanks for spending time reading NILnomics. I thought after last week and my analysis of James Franklin’s buyout at Penn State I wouldn’t need to talk about coaches for awhile. But it being a wild season of college football, change is apparently still in the air. Therefore we’ll be looking at:

• Florida payscale vs. everyone else - How much are the Gators paying compared to the other openings?

• Carousel - Where do all these schools with coach openings rank in resources?

🍻 Pour a drink. Get comfortable. Let’s get into it. 🍻 

If you’re not subscribed already, please click subscribe below to get NILnomics in your mailbox each and every week - it’s free!

Gator Respawning

The news of the day: Billy Napier is out as Florida’s head coach — just days after narrowly escaping Mississippi State. His buyout? A measly $21 million, with half due within 30 days and the rest spread over three annual payments.

The twist: Florida will now be paying Napier, former coach Dan Mullen, and whoever takes over next — all at the same time. That’s a lot of money for one headset.

This week’s first visual looks at the financial side of the current FBS coaching carousel — examining every open position I have data for and tracking what those programs have paid their head coaches over the past seven years.

Quick Takeaways:

• Florida is the key leader, unsurprisingly. As mentioned, the Gators will be paying 3 coaches at once. It’s hard to imagine that causing them to not keep paying top dollar for whoever gets the gig.

• That one year data point I have for UCLA (FY2024) shows they are neck and neck with Arkansas. Will be interesting to see how those new Big 10 checks impact what they’re willing to pay coaches moving forward.

• Was Mike Gundy’s mullet really worth as much as he got paid? It’s interesting to see him approach Napier’s salary in FY 23 when we know he would go on to reduce his salary by $1million at the end of the next season given the poor season Oklahoma State had.

Analyst’s Desk

This data comes from the annual MFRS reports schools submit to the NCAA and which I was able to procure. Yes, many are missing (see: Penn State - who redacted salaries when they gave me their reports, and Stanford). See here for more info on public records requests. From there, I scraped the reports specifically for university and third party payments towards football head coaches.

Quick Takeaways:

• If you told me Arkansas had more Pool Revenue then Penn State I’d assume you’re joking. But the Razorbacks ($130m) are higher than both Penn State ($128m) and Florida ($117m). Who’d have guessed?

• There’s something to being the class of your conference. Yes, Kent State may be at the bottom of FBS relatively speaking, but would you rather be #2 in your conference (the MAC) or have more resources but be near the bottom (UAB is 6/8 in the MW). Worth considering.

• Funny to see UCLA behind Oregon State in the Pac-12 back in the sweet innocent days of FY2024, when the Bruins would skip over to the Big 10 at year’s end.

Analyst’s Desk

Remember, pool revenue is the data point used in the post-House settlement world to determine how much schools can pay players. It’s not reflective of the entire athletics budget, but I like to use it as a good assessment of an athletic department’s finances.

Data comes from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database. I added up 5 of their categories (1. Corporate sponsorships, advertising, and licensing 2. Competition guarantees (revenues) 3. Conference/NCAA distributions, media rights, and post-season football 4. Ticket sales. I used FY2024 data (the latest available), hence Texas being a Big 12 team and UMass being an independent (among other major realignment changes).

🔉 What I’m Listening To 🔉 

I’m always on the lookout for anyone breaking down college sports and especially the business side of the industry. Here’s this week’s best listens:

• Play by Play - Awful Announcing’s sports media podcast can be an entertaining look at the sports media landscape. I’m recommending two recent episodes they had - episode 1 about the changes to Nielsen TV ratings and episode 2 about college football’s ratings dominance by ABC/SEC. Considering we always hear how the networks run college football, these two episodes help you understand the metrics of the industry.

• Higher Ed Athletics - found this pod, which had an interesting interview with the CEO of Pilytix and centered on the topic of donor fatigue in college athletics. I haven’t worked with this space so it was interesting to peak in and hear what happens in development offices.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this week’s issue.

I imagine this could be a reoccurring analysis as no coach is safe in this sport. All it takes is one loss to an underdog and even the most prestigious, well-regarded coach is out of a job. That’s what makes the sport so exciting, I guess. It should make the rest of the season that much more intense, knowing anyone at any given time can be fired. What a world.

Thanks again for your time. Now finish your beverage 😀 

Greg Chick, PhD

Data Analyst

📩 Know someone who cares about the future of college sports? Forward this email or share the subscription link.

💬 Got feedback or a topic you want me to cover? Reply to this email - I read everything!

🖥️ The NILnomics website is your home for all NILnomics content.

⌨️ R code is available at my GitHub here.