What every FBS head coach is owed, and what his contract actually says
What it would cost to fire him — contractual maximum, not money paid. Settlements routinely land far below these figures. 139 of these coaches are currently in the job; 10 have a quantified personal-aircraft grant we can quote.
Kirby Smart
Georgia Bulldogs
$105.11M · $105,107,583
Ryan Day
Ohio State Buckeyes
$70.92M · $70,916,667
Kalen DeBoer
Alabama Crimson Tide
$60.84M · $60,843,750
Steve Sarkisian
Texas Longhorns
$60.31M · $60,307,500
Curt Cignetti
Indiana Hoosiers
$56.70M · $56,700,000
Matt Rhule
Nebraska Cornhuskers
$49.61M · $49,612,500
Josh Heupel
Tennessee Volunteers
$37.50M · $37,500,000
Lane Kiffin
LSU Tigers
$36.60M · $36,600,000
Eliah Drinkwitz
Missouri Tigers
$28.88M · $28,875,685
Kenny Dillingham
Arizona State Sun Devils
$24.68M · $24,683,333
Mike Elko
Texas A&M Aggies
$21.88M · $21,875,000
Ryan Silverfield
Arkansas Razorbacks
$6.47M · $6,472,500
Charles Kelly
Jacksonville State Gamecocks
$3.47M · $3,470,833
Dowell Loggains
Appalachian State Mountaineers
$2.45M · $2,450,000
Michael Desormeaux
Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns
$1.85M · $1,847,708
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.