College football’s top 25 highest-paid coaches for 2020 season

7. Kirby Smart – Georgia

• 2020 Salary: $6.8 million

Georgia is the team we like to call the “best of the rest”. Nobody really picks the Bulldogs to win it all, but they are literally the next team in the rankings. Their best shot was three years ago, just Kirby Smart’s second at UGA. They went all the way to the National Championship Game but ended up losing to Alabama by three. In the last two seasons, they fell just outside the College Football Playoff and played in the Sugar Bowl.

Smart has worked out really well for Georgia, even if he hasn’t delivered the ultimate goal. It definitely helps that Mark Richt, who Smart replaced, had a brief tenure at the University of Miami before retiring.

Smart’s first contract with the Bulldogs was $3.75 million per season. Now, Greg Schiano makes more than that to coach Rutgers. Unsurprisingly, Smart was given a substantial raise, almost 100 percent, just two years later. Now, he’s on a seven-year pact paying him just under $50 million.

The Bulldogs have a really good coach signed on for a long time. He played for the school, which usually ties coaches there over leaving for a little more money or a slightly better program. There aren’t many jobs better than Georgia, so they just needed to up the ante in terms of salary to keep him there for a long time. Smart was once a defensive coordinator at Alabama, but even when Nick Saban eventually retires, it would still be hard to say goodbye to his university.