College football’s 10 highest-paid coaches is pretty shocking

The top of the list of college football’s highest-paid coaches are the usual suspects, but filling out the top 10 are some that will shock you.

College football’s highest-paid coaches have been revealed by USA Today who highlights which coaches are worth the investment and who isn’t.

No. 1 is Clemson’s Dabo Swinney ($9.3 million), followed by Nick Saban ($8.8 million), Jim Harbaugh ($7.504 million), Jimbo Fisher ($7.5 million) and Kirby Smart ($6.8 million).

Leaving aside results on the field, Swinney, Saban, Harbaugh, Fisher and Smart as the five highest-paid coaches in college football is not too surprising. Auburn’s Gus Malzahn ($6.827 million) at No. 6 and Texas’ Tom Herman ($6.75 million) at No. 7 aren’t all that shocking either.

But then, rounding out the 10 most well-compensated head coaches in college football this year is at least one that will shock you and one that sits too low on the list.

Sitting at No. 8 making $6.6 million this year is Jeff Brohm, whose Purdue Boilermakers are 2-5 this season. But they reached a bowl game in his first two seasons as head coach, which qualifies as great progress in West Lafayette. After beating three ranked opponents last year, Purdue gave Brohm a seven-year, $36.8 million contract to keep him from leaving for the job at his alma mater Louisville.

Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley comes in as the ninth-highest paid coach in college football, making $6.38 million. That’s pretty clearly too low on the list, even with a pretty significant raise he got via a new contract earlier this year. He’s not even the highest-paid coach in the Big 12 this year, with Herman edging Riley in total pay. If the NFL comes calling after the season, it’s worth wondering if Riley will seriously entertain making the jump.

At No. 10 is Florida head coach Dan Mullen, as the last college coach making more than $6 million this year ($6.07 million). At No. 11 and No. 12 on the list is a couple of Big Ten coaches. Penn State’s James Franklin is not too big a surprise at No. 11 ($5.65 million), but Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald at No. 12 ($5.14 million) is almost as big a surprise as Brohm being among the 10 highest-paid coaches in college football.

As much as success on the field, leverage based on other opportunities can make a college football coach quite wealthy. As a real threat to go back to his alma mater, Brohm played the leverage game as well as anyone could have and he’s now among the highest-paid coaches in the college game.

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