NCAAF

College football coaches piling up more cash through bonuses

Steve Berkowitz, and Christopher Schnaars
USA TODAY

By nearly any financial reckoning, Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel had a pretty fabulous 2014 season.

Gary Pinkel made $900,000 in bonuses last year at Missouri.

His basic compensation was $3.4 million, and when the Tigers advanced to their second consecutive Southeastern Conference title game, it set the stage for a contract extension that included raises to more than $3.75 million for this season and more than $4.1 million for 2016.

Then there were the bonuses.

Seven of them. Totaling $900,000.

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It was the greatest bonus haul for a football head coach in the NCAA’s Bowl Subdivision last season, according to USA TODAY Sports’ first comprehensive analysis of the incentives actually paid to public-school coaches over the course of a year.

USA TODAY Sports has been tracking coaches’ compensation, including the maximum amounts of bonus money coaches can get in their current contract years, since 2006. Now, even as the average basic pay for FBS head coaches exceeds $2 million, schools sometimes are paying significantly more money in bonuses.

This season, there are 94 head coaches who are at the same public school that employed them as the head coach last season. Of that group, 75 received at least one bonus for meeting benchmarks related to team on-field performance, team academic performance and/or an array of other goals.

Those 75 coaches stacked up 214 bonuses worth nearly $12.4 million. The median payout to a coach receiving a bonus was $95,000.

“Candidly, it is a lot money," said Missouri athletics director Mack Rhoades, who inherited Pinkel's contract when he succeeded Mike Alden in April. "But that’s the market. … Yes, I understand that there can be a large base guaranteed already. But in terms of rewarding success, in terms of wanting your coaches to feel appreciated, wanting them to stay, that’s all part of our business."

Last year, there were payments for championships, bowl appearances and coach-of-the-year awards.

There were payments for coaches whose teams simply exceeded the minimum NCAA Academic Progress Rate figure the association requires for teams to avoid sanctions that can include the loss of postseason eligibility.

Utah State’s Matt Wells got $5,000 for his team’s win over in-state rival BYU. Western Michigan’s P.J. Fleck totaled $21,750 from his players’ individual all-Mid-American Conference team and academic honors. In addition to the bonuses called for in his contract – which totaled $95,000 and covered the Broncos’ appearance in the Fiesta Bowl – Boise State’s Bryan Harsin received an additional $87,875 “for his success last season,” according to a statement provided by athletics department spokesman Max Corbet.

Pinkel was eligible to receive as much as $1.825 million in bonuses last season, when, according to Rhoades, "we were not paying our head coach a guarantee probably at the rate he deserved in terms of his success compared to other SEC coaches."

He received a combined $500,000 for being named SEC coach of the year and the team’s 11 wins, final position in the College Football Playoff rankings, appearances in the SEC title game and the Citrus Bowl.

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His bonuses also included a $250,000 payment for meeting a goal or goals “within the areas of academic accomplishment and the social responsibility and conduct of the student athletes” in the programs. The goal or goals were to be established in writing by the athletics director, in consultation with the chancellor and the faculty athletics representative. USA TODAY Sports last year attempted to acquire this document from the university, which declared it closed under an exception to the state’s open-records laws that covers individually identifiable personnel records and performance ratings.

In addition, Pinkel received $150,000 because ticket receipts from home football games exceeded $15 million but not $15.5 million, a benchmark that would have triggered a slightly larger payment.

That bonus was removed as part of the revisions to Pinkel’s contract, which includes more guaranteed money than it did last season but also a drastically reduced maximum bonus total of $725,000. "Now, we've made that transition," Rhoades said.

Nationally, though, the bonus ledger shows few signs of shrinking this season.

Hawaii’s Norm Chow picked up $25,000 in Week 1 for winning a nationally televised home game. Bowling Green’s Dino Babers has claimed a pair of $12,500 payments for wins over teams from a Power Five conference. Utah’s Kyle Whittingham will get at least $15,000 because the Utes have moved into the national rankings.

And on Saturday, several teams could get their sixth win of the season, making them bowl eligible — and many of their coaches bonus eligible.