Highest-Paid NCAA Football Coaches: Reported Pay

The highest-paid college football coaches are reportedly Kirby Smart of Georgia and Ryan Day of Ohio State, each above $12 million a year in the mid-2020s. Dabo Swinney, Steve Sarkisian, Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly follow, all reported near or above $10 million. Nick Saban topped this list for most of his career before retiring in January 2024.

College football pay comes with a twist that separates it from the NFL and NBA. At public universities, coach salaries are disclosable under state open-records laws, so most of these numbers are documented rather than merely reported. The estimates cluster around the private schools, which are exempt from those laws.

What the top college coaches reportedly earn

The figures below are reported total annual pay from the mid-2020s. Public-school figures come from open-records filings; private-school figures, marked below, are estimates.

Coach	School	Reported annual pay
Kirby Smart	Georgia	~$13M
Ryan Day	Ohio State	~$12.5M
Dabo Swinney	Clemson	~$11.5M
Steve Sarkisian	Texas	~$10.5M
Lincoln Riley	USC (private, estimate)	~$10M
Brian Kelly	LSU	~$10M
Kalen DeBoer	Alabama	~$10M

Smart’s pay reflects two national titles at Georgia, and Day’s climbed after Ohio State’s championship run. DeBoer’s figure is notable for a different reason: he inherited the Alabama job, and roughly the salary tier, that Saban built.

The verifiable-salary advantage

This is the part that sets college pay apart from its pro cousins. Because state schools must answer open-records requests, a Georgia or Ohio State coach’s contract is a public document, not a whisper from an agent. That is why USA Today can publish a searchable salary database for college football but no equivalent exists for NFL or NBA coaches, whose pay stays private.

The exceptions are the private universities. USC, Notre Dame, Stanford and a handful of others are not bound by open-records laws, so Lincoln Riley’s USC salary is an informed estimate rather than a filed number. When you see a private-school coach ranked to the dollar, treat it with the same caution you would an NFL coaching figure.

Nick Saban and the era he set

For most of the 2010s the highest-paid college coach was Nick Saban, reported above $11 million a year at Alabama and setting the ceiling that every school below him negotiated against. He retired in January 2024, which is why he sits outside the current table despite shaping it. His successor at Alabama stepped into a salary band Saban had spent 15 years inflating.

Saban’s run is the reminder that these lists are snapshots. The top name changes as coaches retire, get poached or get fired, and the market resets around whoever wins next.

Guaranteed money and the record buyouts

The flip side of guaranteed contracts is the buyout, and college football produces the largest ones in sports. Texas A&M owed Jimbo Fisher a reported $77 million to walk away in 2023, the richest buyout on record, and the school kept paying it long after he left the sideline. Because the deals are fully guaranteed, a program can carry a fired coach on its books for years, occasionally while funding his replacement at the same time.

That structure is why a splashy record contract is a double-edged number. The same guarantee that lands a coach can bury a school if the hire goes wrong, which is exactly what happened in College Station.

If you like testing football knowledge name by name, our Guess the NFL Player daily game runs on the same recall these coaches recruit for.

Where college pay sits against the pros

The best-paid college coaches now report figures close to established NFL head coaches, though the highest NFL salaries still lead. Our roundup of the highest-paid NFL coaches shows that comparison directly, and the richest coaches in sports places both inside the global picture, where a few figures out-earn them all.

Freshness note: these figures reflect the mid-2020s and move each hiring cycle as coaches sign extensions, get fired or change schools. Re-check the USA Today database for public-school numbers each offseason, and remember that private-school figures remain estimates.