College football’s best coach, is now also its highest paid coach. That’s right, your boy Nick Saban broke the bank ya’ll!
On Monday, the three-time National Championship coach signed a two-year extension that will keep him at the school through the end of the 2019 season. For a coach who’ll be 61 in October, it virtually guarantees Saban will be at Alabama until the day he stops coaching football. In the process, he will also become the highest paid coach in the sport, with a raise that’ll pay him $5.3 million for the 2012 season. Saban made a paltry $4.8 million salary during 2011, which makes you wonder how the poor guy even put food on the table for his family last fall.
All joking aside, it’s a well-earned raise for a man that has proven to be the best coach in modern college football history over the last couple years. After taking over at Alabama in 2007 and seeing the team go 6-7 in his first season, the Crimson Tide have been a veritable machine since then. Over the last four years Alabama has won 48 games total, including the 2009 and 2011 BCS Championships. Saban’s salary eclipses that of Mack Brown, who made just under $5.2 million at Texas last year.
And when you break things down further, it’s hard not to see what kind of impact Saban and the football team’s success have had on the university.
A recent study by the website BusinessofCollegeSports.com shows that of every school during the 2010-2011 fiscal school year, Alabama had the highest net income at $31,684,872. Obviously it’s impossible to attribute all of that to football, but at the same time, given that Alabama didn’t make the NCAA Tournament in either men’s or women’s basketball… ok, who am I kidding, almost all of that revenue was tied to the Crimson Tide’s football program.
In addition to just the raw figure of $31 million (which according to BusinessofCollegeSports is a number three times greater than anyone else in the SEC) know what the craziest part is about all that? In 2011, Alabama didn’t win the National Championship or even play in a BCS bowl game (they beat Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl). Imagine how much higher that number will likely be in 2012 coming off a National Championship?
Then there are Saban’s assistants, who all cashed in alongside Saban too. Every assistant got a raise with the exception of offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland, who is still under investigation for any wrongdoing that might’ve occurred while he was at the University of Miami.
But as for everyone else? Well… they got paaaaaaid. Every other assistant on the staff saw their salaries increase, and really, the big winners were offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier and defensive coordinator Kirby Smart. In a world where virtually all assistant coaches live on one-year contracts, each signed a three-year deal with the school, with Smart getting a $100,000 pay raise up to $950,000 per year. Nussmeier, who has never even coached a snap at Alabama after replacing Jim McElwain as the offensive coordinator, will be paid $530,000 this spring.
As for Saban, here are a few more particulars of his contract, per an ESPN report:
– The contract will pay him $45 million over eight years
– He will receive $5.62 annually over the course of the contract
– As things stand, his $5.3 million
– He’ll receive a $50,000 pay raise next year, and an annual $100,000 increase every year after that
– Should he stay through the end of his contract (and assuming there are no more re-negotiations, which there will be if Alabama keeps winning at the clip that they have), Saban will make $5.97 in the last year of his contract.
And speaking of which, that’s kind of the craziest part of all. Remember when Saban came to Alabama from the Miami Dolphins, and the four-year, $32 million contract was considered preposterous?
Yeah, not so much anymore, huh?
For all his insight, opinions and articles on sports, be sure to follow Aaron Torres on Twitter @Aaron_Torres.
