Icon (Close Menu)

Logout

Performance, Not Academics, Drive Incentives for SEC Football Coaches

2 min read

When’s the last time you heard of a college football coach getting fired for his players’ bad grades?

Sure, you’ve heard of the ones where an academic scandal has hit the fan, and the university is forced to clean house, but you usually don’t hear of coaches being let go because their starting quarterback can’t make the grades.

It’s because college football is an industry driven by on-the-field results. Those results are the driver that results in millions upon millions pouring into the universities.

Just look at the Southeastern Conference, the proclaimed king of the college football world, where the top teams and top-paid coaches reside. The majority of the coaches have base salaries north of $2 million. Bret Bielema, head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks, has a base salary of $2.95 million.

Forbes recently broke down salaries of 11 of 14 SEC coaches — that was all that was immediately available — to research each coach’s incentives for on-the-field results and in-the-classroom results.

The results are not surprising.

On average, if the coaches evaluated in the Forbes study met all of the on-the-field incentives in their contract, they would receive $966,363. 

Gus Malzahn, an Arkansas native who is now head coach for Auburn University, had the largest amount of incentives tied to on-the-field results, which maxes out at $1.8 million. Others had max incentives above six figures: Mark Stoops of the University of Kentucky is at $1.5 million; Gary Pinkel at University of Missouri is at $1.4 million; and Steve Spurrier of the University of South Carolina is at $1.1 million.

Bielema came in at $800,000 in max incentives tied to on-the-field results.

On the flip side, the 11 SEC coaches evaluated by Forbes had an average max academic incentive of $113,636.

Also interesting: two coaches — Will Muschamp of the University of Florida and Kevin Sumlin of Texas A&M University — have no academic incentives in their multi-million dollar contracts. In turn, Muschamp has $450,000 in performance incentives and Sumlin has $625,000.

According to Forbes, Pinkel had the largest max academic incentive at $250,000. Bielema and Les Miles of Louisiana State University followed at $200,000. 

Forbes offered this after its findings:

“This isn’t an indictment of either college football broadly or the SEC specifically. Football coaches are obviously paid to coach football, not teach math or science. But when hours spent in the classroom and on the practice field are often viewed as pulling in two opposite directions, football coach bonus structure offer an indication about where schools would prefer student-athletes spend their time.”

Currently, the SEC has four of the top five teams in the country, five of the top 10, and six of the top 25. 

A review of the latest academic progress ratings for the 2012-13 year, listed here by SB Nation, shows only two SEC schools in the top 25 — South Carolina and Missouri. 

Arkansas was rated No. 195 out of 245 schools, with an APR of 935.

Send this to a friend