Exploring 2017 FBS Coach Salary Data
January 14, 2018
Note before reading: The interactive plots in this post, powered by Plotly, are made to be viewed on a laptop or desktop. The mobile experience is abysmal.
Coaching amateur athletes can be a lucrative endeavor. In 2016, the top-earning public employee in 27 states was an NCAA Division-I FBS coach (and a D-I basketball coach in 12 others). Curious about trends in pay distribution, I searched for a reliable source of salary data, finding one in USA Today. Since 2014, the publication has requested and released coach compensation data from all FBS schools. Public schools are required to release such information, but private schools are exempt.
After scraping data for the last few years, I plotted head coach salaries by conference.
Head coaches
SEC coaches consistently made the most, followed by the Big Ten. Both conferences are members of the Power Five (along with the ACC, Pac-12, and Big 12). Teams outside of these conferences are either in the Group of Five (American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference, and the Sun Belt) or are independent (Notre Dame, Massachusetts, Brigham Young, and Army).
Now, let's put the salaries of the highest earners in perspective. Of the Group of Five, three conferences had complete head coach salary data: MAC, Sun Belt, and C-USA. The 38 head coach salaries in these conferences sum to $24.276 million. The top three individual earners overall (Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, and Jim Harbaugh), collectively earned $26.64 million. Their 3 salaries could cover the salaries of all 38 head coaches in these 3 conferences, with more than $2.3 million to spare.
But what about their staff? I scraped assistant coach salary data and plotted it by conference.
The assistants
Like their head coaches, assistants in the SEC tend to earn the most. In 2017, Seven of the top nine assistant salaries went to SEC coaches. LSU's defensive coordinator, Dave Aranda, was the top-earning assistant, making $1.8 million. His defensive counterpart, Matt Canada, was fourth on the list with $1.505 million. Alabama and Michigan each employed a pair of assistants in the top 10.
Comparing head coach pay to their staff
For each year from 2014-2017, about half of Power Five head coaches made a salary greater than their 9 assistants' salaries totaled. This was only true for about 5% of schools outside of Power Five conferences each year. The following plot consists of each school's head coach salary plotted against staff salaries totaled.
