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It's a big-money dance that takes place this time every year: One university wants to hang onto its highly successful football coach. Another wants to hire him.
Les Miles couldn't lose.
On Thursday — four days after Miles and Louisiana State landed a berth in college football's national championship game and five days after he ruled out a move to Michigan — LSU's Board of Supervisors will gather in Baton Rouge and likely approve an extension of his contract through 2012. It figures to make Miles a $3-million-a-year man.
Another one.
Four coaches — Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Alabama's Nick Saban, Florida's Urban Meyer and Iowa's Kirk Ferentz — already have cracked the $3 million mark, leading a spiral that shows no sign of slowing. This year, for the first time, the average earnings of the 120 major-college football coaches hit $1 million, a USA TODAY analysis finds. That's not counting the benefits, perks and myriad bonuses in their contracts.
At least 50 coaches are making seven figures, seven more than a year ago. At least a dozen are pulling down $2 million or more, up from nine in 2006. Last season, Stoops was the only one making more than $3 million.
"Is this a favorable trend? The answer is: Of course not," says LSU Chancellor Sean O'Keefe, who worked out the new deal with Miles. "That said, it's also market dynamics. The value of things is determined by the demand that exists. There's nothing unfair about that."
The marketplace shudders at the end of every season. Coaches retire, resign and are fired, and schools eager to preserve or upgrade their programs chase the most attractive replacements. Others try to keep their coaches from being poached.
Even without competition for their coaches' services, most schools are digging deeper into their budgets in December and January to pay incentives to their coaches for winning conference championships, getting to bowl games, drawing fans and keeping their players in good academic standing.
It's an investment, school officials say, in the health of a sport that's the revenue-generating backbone of most major-college athletics programs. Successful teams pump up ticket sales and prices, television rights fees, marketing revenue, donations and even applications for admission to the universities.
At LSU, a football team that finished 11-2 and ranked No. 3 in 2006 accounted for 63% of the school's athletics revenue for the year. It also accounted for a lion's share of the spending — more than $16 million — but turned an almost $32 million profit that helped underwrite the school's non-moneymaking sports.
Not all athletics departments are self-supporting, however. The NCAA's latest data shows that more than four of every five major-college sports programs need institutional subsidies, student fees and other supplements to balance their budgets.
Moreover, the climb in coaching salaries — punctuated by the unprecedented eight-year, $32 million deal Alabama gave Saban last January — has fanned concerns that big-time college sports have become too far removed from their educational missions.
College presidents' pay typically pales in comparison. Alabama's Robert Witt made $572,620 last year, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Median total compensation for 182 presidents and chancellors of public research universities and university systems was a little more than $397,000 annually, the publication found.
NCAA President Myles Brand has pointed to escalating coaches' salaries — especially those such as Saban's in football — as an increasingly significant issue for schools.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2007-12-04-coaches-pay_N.htm
