In roughly 40 of the 50 states, the highest paid public employee is a college football or men’s basketball head coach. The top earner in 2025 is Georgia football coach Kirby Smart at more than $13.2 million a year, followed by Ryan Day at Ohio State ($12.6 million), Lincoln Riley at USC ($11.5 million), Dabo Swinney at Clemson ($11.4 million), and Steve Sarkisian at Texas ($10.8 million). Ten football coaches now clear $10 million annually. The rest of the state-by-state list is filled out mostly by basketball coaches, with a handful of university presidents, medical school deans, and pension fund executives holding the top spot in states without a flagship program in a power athletic conference.
Football Coaches at the Top
Football head coaches occupy the top slot in most states with a major program. Beyond the five names above, performance bonuses tied to conference championships and College Football Playoff appearances can push actual pay well past the base contract figures. A decade ago, $10 million for a college coach would have been treated as an outlier. It is now the going rate at the top of the sport.
Basketball Coaches Where Football Doesn’t Dominate
In states whose flagship university is better known for basketball than football, the men’s basketball coach is usually the highest paid public employee. Bill Self at Kansas leads the group at roughly $8.9 million, with Dan Hurley at UConn at $8 million and John Calipari at Arkansas at $7.75 million. These figures still sit well above every non-athletic public salary in their states.
States Where the Top Earner Isn’t a Coach
In the handful of states without a flagship in a power conference, the top job on the payroll goes to someone else. Public university presidents at major research institutions bring in more than most people expect. The president of the University of Houston received over $3.1 million in total compensation in 2024, and the presidents at West Virginia, Kentucky, and Texas Tech each exceeded $1.6 million. Packages above $1 million are increasingly common at large public doctoral universities once base salary, deferred compensation, housing allowances, and retirement contributions are added together.
Medical school deans and healthcare system administrators at public universities form another high-pay tier, generally between $800,000 and $2 million. Their compensation reflects the clinical revenue their operations generate. A state-funded medical center employing thousands and pulling in hundreds of millions in patient care revenue pays its leadership at rates comparable to private hospital systems.
Chief investment officers of state pension funds sit in the same range, less visibly. They manage retirement portfolios worth tens of billions, and their pay usually includes performance-based bonuses. In several states, pension CIO compensation lands between $1 million and $2.5 million when incentives are counted. A CIO who outperforms benchmarks by a fraction of a percentage point generates hundreds of millions of additional value for retirees, which is the argument states use to justify the pay.
Where the Money Actually Comes From
The frequent objection that taxpayers are funding eight-figure coaching salaries is mostly, though not entirely, wrong. At major programs, the great majority of coaching pay flows from athletic department revenue rather than state appropriations.
Media rights deals do the heavy lifting. The Big Ten’s television contract is worth over $8 billion across seven years, roughly $1.15 billion a year. The SEC’s ten-year deal with ESPN is valued at about $3 billion, paying out around $710 million annually. The Big 12’s six-year extension averages $380 million a year. The College Football Playoff broadcasting agreement alone is worth $7.8 billion through 2032. The average school in a power conference received $47.3 million in television revenue distribution in 2023, compared with $4 million for schools in smaller conferences.1U.S. Senate. NIL Media Rights Report
Athletic departments also generate revenue through ticket sales, corporate sponsorships, merchandise licensing, and booster donations. Many coaching contracts are funded partly or entirely through private donations earmarked for that purpose. A booster group may commit millions each year toward the head football coach’s salary, money that would never have reached the general fund in any event.
The firewall is real at the top programs but thins lower down. State appropriations still fund the campus infrastructure that supports the athletic program, some universities subsidize athletic departments that don’t cover their own costs, and at schools outside the power conferences state funds sometimes reach coaching salaries more directly.
Why the Gap Between States Is So Wide
The single biggest factor determining whether a state’s top earner makes $2 million or $13 million is whether the flagship university competes in a power conference. The Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, and ACC pull in the vast majority of media rights revenue, and that revenue flows straight into what athletic departments can pay. A Big Ten school might collect $60 million or more from television annually; a school in a smaller conference might collect $4 million.
States without power-conference programs see a very different top of the payroll. The highest earner is more likely to be a university system president at $1.5 million, a medical school administrator, or a pension fund executive. The ceiling is lower, but the reasoning is the same: the state competes with private hospitals, investment firms, and private universities for the same people.
Cost of living and state size matter at the margins. Public universities in New York or California carry higher pay expectations across every role, and larger states run larger university systems, bigger hospitals, and deeper pension portfolios. But those effects are small next to the athletic revenue effect. Even small states with a power-conference team see football coaches earning $5 million to $8 million, far ahead of anyone else on the state payroll.
Buyouts Can Cost More Than the Salary
When a university fires a coach before the contract ends, the remaining guaranteed money usually has to be paid in full, and the numbers have grown alongside salaries. The largest coaching buyout in college sports history belongs to Jimbo Fisher, who was owed approximately $76.8 million when Texas A&M fired him in 2023. Other large buyouts include Brian Kelly at LSU ($53.8 million), James Franklin at Penn State ($49 million), and Gus Malzahn at Auburn ($21.4 million).
Whether the fired coach has to try to reduce that bill depends on the contract. Some deals include a mitigation clause requiring a good-faith effort to find comparable work, with any new earnings offsetting what the university owes. Jim Harbaugh’s contract at Michigan required him to seek new employment as soon as reasonably practical, and his monthly payments were reduced by whatever he earned elsewhere. Other contracts explicitly waive any duty to mitigate. Fisher’s Texas A&M deal stated he had no obligation to find another coaching job, and any future earnings would not reduce what the university owed. A coach on that kind of deal can be fired, immediately hired by another school, and collect full salaries from both institutions at once.
Federal Tax Rules on Public Compensation Over $1 Million
Public universities organized as tax-exempt entities face a federal excise tax when they pay any individual more than $1 million a year. Under Section 4960 of the Internal Revenue Code, the institution owes a tax equal to the corporate rate (currently 21 percent) on the portion of compensation above $1 million paid to any covered employee.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 4960 – Tax on Excess Tax-Exempt Organization Executive Compensation A university paying a coach $10 million owes roughly $1.89 million in excise tax on the $9 million above the threshold. Excess parachute payments, such as large severance packages, trigger the same tax. The tax falls on the institution, not the employee.
The provision was enacted as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 and applies to the five highest-compensated employees at each tax-exempt organization, including former employees who held that status in any year after 2016. Once someone qualifies as a covered employee, they remain one permanently, and the excise tax follows them even after they leave.
How These Salary Numbers Are Public
Every dollar of public employee compensation is subject to disclosure, which is why these figures are available at all. At the federal level, the Freedom of Information Act requires agencies to release records to any person who requests them, and courts can order production of records that are improperly withheld.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 U.S. Code 552 – Public Information; Agency Rules, Opinions, Orders, Records, and Proceedings FOIA applies to federal entities, but every state has adopted its own public records law using the same framework. All 50 states require disclosure of government employee names and compensation, though procedures and timelines vary.
Tax-exempt organizations, including most public universities, also file IRS Form 990, which requires detailed reporting of executive compensation on Schedule J. The disclosure covers far more than base salary: first-class travel, charter flights, companion travel, housing allowances, tax gross-up payments, health and social club memberships, and personal services such as chauffeurs or financial planners.4Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule J (Form 990) These filings are public. Most states now also publish searchable salary databases online, which is where the annual rankings of top-paid public employees by state come from.