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It’s time to nerd out on the compensation of college football head coaches, and Stewart Mandel addresses the Washington State-ESPN dust-up.
Here’s what’s happening in college football Until Saturday …

Salary Breakdowns
Stoops sits pretty; Utah gets a bargain
Alabama’s Nick Saban, with a salary of more than $11.4 million, tops USA Today’s database of college football head coach compensation, which was released Tuesday. Saban is followed by Clemson’s Dabo Swinney ($10.88 million), Georgia’s Kirby Smart ($10.71 million), Ohio State’s Ryan Day ($10.27 million) and former Michigan State coach Mel Tucker ($10.02 million). Salaries for private school coaches like Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and USC’s Lincoln Riley are not listed. Here are a few of my biggest takeaways:
- Kentucky’s Mark Stoops, with the eighth highest salary at $9.01 million, stands out. Stoops’ compensation is fifth in the SEC. He is the second-longest-tenured coach in the conference behind Saban and has a 71-59 record in 10 seasons. He has raised expectations at Kentucky and built consistency, an advantage he has over his SEC counterparts who are expected to churn out undefeated, national champions each year.
- Utah is getting a deal with Kyle Whittingham. While Stoops has the best contract from a coach’s perspective, Utah is getting the most bang for its buck. Whittingham is in his 19th season leading Utah but has been with the program since 1994. His $6.36 million salary fares well in the Pac-12 (second to Oregon’s Dan Lanning) but is 23rd nationally, less than Arkansas’ Sam Pittman, Illinois’ Bret Bielema and Auburn’s Hugh Freeze. The Utes are going for their third straight Pac-12 title and have had only two losing seasons under Whittingham.
- Jake Dickert will be hard to keep if Washington State’s a Group of 5 program. The Wazzu coach makes a Pac-12-low $2.7 million (although we do not know the salaries of Riley or Stanford’s Troy Taylor). The only other Power 5 coach who makes less than Dickert is Gus Malzahn at UCF ($2.3 million). Dickert is 14-9 at WSU, including a six-game interim stint in 2021. The 40-year-old has also emerged as a potential candidate for Michigan State, to which Dickert responded: “These are the things that come with team success. … I love my job, I love being here; we’re focused on being right here right now, not in the past, not in the future.”
- Speaking of MSU, Tucker being in the top five is embarrassing. We knew he was there, but every time I see it, it looks worse. Before getting fired for cause on Sept. 27, Tucker was the second-highest-paid Big Ten coach by a wide margin (Penn State’s James Franklin makes $1.52 million less, and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh makes $1.76 million less). MSU bought in big, quickly, and it backfired.
- These buyouts are bonkers! Georgia would owe Smart $92.63 million if it were to fire him without cause before Dec. 1. Of course, it won’t, but that number is hilariously high. But … at least Smart has won something. Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher (with a 43-22 record) has the second-highest buyout at $77.56 million, still more than Brian Kelly’s $70.02 at LSU. If fired without cause before Dec. 1 (as the database states), 46 coaches would be owed a buyout of at least $10 million. As our Nicole Auerbach noted in her Week 5 lessons, five Power 5 coaches had been fired for on-field performance by this time last year. For now, we’re at zero in 2023, although expect some of these buyout numbers to hit the headlines before the end of the season.
Nicole and Chris Vannini have more takeaways on coaching salaries in today’s Power Auer podcast.
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Comparing conferences
Highest-paid coaches per conference:
SEC: Saban
ACC: Swinney
Big Ten: Day
Big 12: Mike Gundy (Oklahoma State), $7.1 million
Pac-12: Lanning, $6.62 million
AAC: Willie Fritz (Tulane), $2.84 million
Mountain West: Craig Bohl (Wyoming), $2.34 million
MAC: Jason Candle (Toledo), $1.13 million
CUSA: Rich Rodriguez (Jacksonville State), $1 million
Sun Belt: Tim Beck (Coastal Carolina) and Jon Sumrall (Troy), $1 million
2023 pay bumps: USA Today reports that Power 5 schools will pay their coaches an average of $6.2 million this year (not including salaries from private schools). That’s a 14.8 percent increase from last year.
Let’s stay in the coaching realm with Stewart Mandel.
Mandel’s Mailbag
What’s eating Pat McAfee?
What’s up with Pat McAfee dissing Washington State when the whole country is on the Cougs’ side? Is the ESPN-Fox war that intense? — Paul, Louisville
Classless. No other way to put it.
I don’t believe it was about ESPN vs. Fox; it was McAfee being protective of his “College GameDay” teammates after Dickert took a shot at Lee Corso following the Cougars’ win over Oregon State two weekends ago and Ryan Leaf drawing Kirk Herbstreit’s ire on Twitter.
Everyone at ESPN, but especially Herbstreit, is understandably protective of the 88-year-old Corso, and McAfee’s brand is that he’s completely unfiltered, so I’m not surprised he fired back. But he crossed the line when he made it about the entire Wazzu fan base, especially on his show Monday. He kept bringing up how “College Gameday” has helped promote Wazzu by spotlighting the Wazzu flag, which – is relevant how?
“So for one time, they (GameDay) don’t go, ‘Ohhhh, Washington State,’” he said while doing a mock bow-down gesture. “You guys just start getting petty and attacking? F— off.”
C’mon, man. These folks’ favorite school is about to get left for scraps because a TV negotiation went poorly, and you’re telling them to f— off?
The whole thing speaks to how awkward it is for either ESPN or Fox talent to discuss realignment at all. Obviously, Corso had no involvement in those negotiations, but his employer sure did. I don’t fault ESPN for the Pac-12’s demise. It’s not the network that helped coax four big brands to a conference whose rights it happens to own (that was Fox).
But you can’t tell any story about realignment without including ESPN as a player. So when one of the most prominent faces of that network makes a joke, even an innocuous one, about “Nobody wants us,” you can see why the coach and the former star player of the program he’s mocking might take it personally.
McAfee is an entertainer, not a college football analyst, so I’m not sure he cares about offending anyone. But go after someone who actually deserves a “F— off,” not a reeling fan base and university.
Read the full mailbag here.
Quick Snaps
Kenny Smith asks Bama players the best ways to deal with Nick Saban’s fiery coaching, which includes some motivation from “Miss Terry.”
Justin Williams and Sam Khan Jr. rank Texas and Oklahoma (and the other teams in the Big 12) entering the Red River game and Week 6.
In yesterday’s newsletter, we sent UAB coach Trent Dilfer to College Football Beefs court for his heated outburst on the sidelines. On Tuesday, the first-year Blazers coach said he was “regretful” of his actions.
Iowa QB Cade McNamara is out for the season with an ACL injury. The Hawkeyes will turn permanently to Deacon Hill.
Deion Sanders shot down questions about a lifetime contract with Colorado, saying he was “smart enough to know and old and wise enough to know that that can flip on you instantaneously.”
For Dia Bell, son of former NBA guard Raja Bell, it’s easy to show college coaches he comes from an athletic gene pool. Manny Navarro has a feature on the 2026 QB prospect.
(Top photo of Mark Stoops: Johnnie Izquierdo / Getty Images)
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