USA Today came out with its list of coaching salaries today, and Chris Low of ESPN breaks down the SEC rankings by coach.
Kentucky’s Rich Brooks is next-to-last, though you have to remember that the salary of Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson remains unpublished, since Vandy is a private school.
The SEC rankings, by the dollar:
- 1. Florida’s Urban Meyer at $4 million per year.
- 2. Alabama’s Nick Saban at $3.9 million.
- 3. LSU’s Les Miles at $3.75 million.
- 4. Georgia’s Mark Richt at $3,096,576.
- 5. Arkansas’ Bobby Petrino at $2,858,000.
- 6. Ole Miss’ Houston Nutt at $2,509,000.
- 7. Auburn’s Gene Chizik at $2,050,000.
- 8. South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier at $2,031,500.
- 9. Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin at $2 million.
- 10. Kentucky’s Rich Brooks at $1,617,517.
- 11. Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen at $1.2 million.
John Clay is a sports columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader. A native of Central Kentucky and graduate of UK, he covered UK football for 13 seasons before being promoted to columnist in 2000. He lives in Lexington with his wife and two sons. You can e-mail him at jclay@herald-leader.com.
Can you imagine how many tomatos Coach Brooks could grow with Urban Meyer’s $4 million a year?
Not sure what the point of that list is other than to get people worked up. We should be thrilled that’s the way other universities choose to spend their money. UK football has never been competitive with the top teams in the sec so maybe Rich Brooks is overpaid. That said, he seems to be a man of some integrity so it’s good having him as a coach of our program. We have seen what happens when the AD fails to use intellect and logic (assuming he has any to begin with) in making hiring and pay decisions around head coaches (Billy G and stupid amount of money paid for Cal). Based on the game a couple of weeks ago, Dan Mullen is the only guy who should be upset (if that’s indeed the point here).