What every FBS head coach is owed, and what his contract actually says

Pay and buyout figures come from the schools' own disclosures. Where we hold the contract itself, the fine print is quoted verbatim with its page number and a link to the document — including the clauses that hand a coach a plane.

138Programs

106With pay on file

93With buyout terms

12Contracts on file

Personal flight hours a contract grants per year. Only coaches with a documented aircraft clause appear here. 139 of these coaches are currently in the job; 10 have a quantified personal-aircraft grant we can quote.

Rank / coachPersonal flight hoursFine print

Curt Cignetti

Indiana Hoosiers

75 hours · per year · reported

Reported at 75 hours of private jet travel a year, added in his revised 2024 deal.read the contract →

Lane Kiffin

LSU Tigers

65 hours · per year

65 hours of private flying a year for personal use, and unused hours roll forward.read the contract →

Kalen DeBoer

Alabama Crimson Tide

55 hours · per year

55 hours a year on a university non-commercial plane for personal trips; nothing carries over.read the contract →

Matt Rhule

Nebraska Cornhuskers

50 hours · per year · reported

Reported at 50 personal jet hours a year, family included. The primary PDF is on Nebraska's portal but could not be retrieved.read the contract →

Ryan Day

Ohio State Buckeyes

50 hours · per year · reported

50 personal jet hours a year on top of 50 business hours — and empty deadhead legs count against the total.read the contract →

Mike Elko

Texas A&M Aggies

40 hours · per year · reported

Reported at 40 guaranteed flight hours; the 2025 personal-use cost was reported at $493,000.read the contract →

Josh Heupel

Tennessee Volunteers

30 hours · per year

Ten occupied legs or thirty occupied hours a year, whichever runs out first — family and guests included.read the contract →

Kirby Smart

Georgia Bulldogs

25 hours · per year · reported

Reported at 25 hours a year on a light jet via Delta Jets or a comparable carrier, with unused time carrying over.read the contract →

Steve Sarkisian

Texas Longhorns

20 hours · per year

20 hours of private flight time a year for personal use, with no carryover.read the contract →

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.