What every FBS head coach is owed, and what his contract actually says
School-reported contract pay for the most recent fiscal year on file. Not realized W-2 compensation. 139 of these coaches are currently in the job; 10 have a quantified personal-aircraft grant we can quote.
Kirby Smart
Georgia Bulldogs
$13.28M · $13,282,580
Ryan Day
Ohio State Buckeyes
$12.57M · $12,575,000
Steve Sarkisian
Texas Longhorns
$10.80M · $10,800,000
Kalen DeBoer
Alabama Crimson Tide
$10.25M · $10,250,000
Eliah Drinkwitz
Missouri Tigers
$9.00M · $9,000,000
Josh Heupel
Tennessee Volunteers
$9.00M · $9,000,000
Lane Kiffin
LSU Tigers
$9.00M · $9,000,000
Matt Rhule
Nebraska Cornhuskers
$8.50M · $8,500,000
Curt Cignetti
Indiana Hoosiers
$8.30M · $8,300,000
Mike Elko
Texas A&M Aggies
$7.00M · $7,000,000
Ryan Silverfield
Arkansas Razorbacks
$2.25M · $2,250,000
Charles Kelly
Jacksonville State Gamecocks
$1.00M · $1,000,000
Dowell Loggains
Appalachian State Mountaineers
$1.00M · $1,000,000
Will Stein
Kentucky Wildcats
not disclosed
How to read these rankings
Pay and buyout figures are school-reported contract terms collected in USA TODAY's coaches salary database, not realized compensation. Form 990 totals for private schools measure something different — actual W-2 pay, on a different calendar — and are never blended into the same column here.
A buyout is a liability, not a payment. It is the contractual maximum a school would owe on a termination without cause, before offset, mitigation, or the negotiated settlement that usually follows. When a settlement is documented, it replaces the gross figure on that coach's page.
Jet-hours rows count only contracts we hold and have quoted. A coach missing from that tab has no documented grant in this corpus — not necessarily no aircraft use. Figures marked reported come from published reporting rather than a primary document we hold, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
Fiscal years are not uniform across schools, and a coach hired or fired mid-year can carry a figure that covers only part of the season. Treat cross-school gaps of a few percent as noise rather than signal.