Is GM Ron Rivera Worth What Cal Pays Him? Is He Worth More?

Details of Cal's contract with Ron Rivera are revealed, and he is among the highest-paid college general managers

Ron Rivera | Photo by Jake Curtis

Ron Rivera’s annual salary of $800,000 as Cal football general manager had been reported back in October, but details of his contract with Cal were reported recently by the San Francisco Chronicle.

In October, Rivera’s $800,000-a-year deal tied him for the fifth-highest salary among general managers at FBS public institutions, according to a USA Today report.  But since then, Rivera’s salary ranking has dropped to a tie for the 10th-highest salary as general managers across the country get raises at major football schools.

There may be other public-institution GM salaries that have not been reported, and the list does not include general manager salaries at private universities, whose financial statements are not available to the public.

Here is a top-10 list of known college football general manager salaries at public schools, based on the USA Today report and other reports:

Michael Lombardi, North Carolina -- $1.51 million

Jim Nagy, Oklahoma -- $1.15 million

Vince Marrow, Louisville -- $1.1 million

Billy Glasscock, LSU -- $1 million

Chad Bowden, USC -- $1 million

Brandon Harris, Texas -- $1 million

Mark Pantoni, Ohio State -- $925,000

Marshall Malchow, Oregon -- $900,000

Courtney Morgan, Alabama -- $825,000

Ron Rivera, Cal -- $800,000

Austin Thomas, Mississippi -- $800,000

Patrick Stewart, Nebraska -- $800,000

So is Rivera worth being among the highest-paid GMs?

Before addressing that question, let’s take a look at the details of his contract, as reported by the Chronicle.

--- It is a three-year contract that runs through March 2028.

--- The $800,000 salary is based on a base salary of $250,000 and a talent fee of $550,000, which is the standard way that a college football head coach’s salary is structured. What is not specified is whether Rivera's salary is paid through donations or by the university.

--- Rivera could earn bonuses of up to $800,000 based on the number of games Cal wins in a season. That payout is capped at 10 wins, so if Cal would go, say, 10-3 in 2026, Rivera would make $1.6 million. The $800,000 is believed to be the highest maximum bonus for a general manager in the country.

 --- His duties, as spelled out in the contract, include supervising the head coach and other positions in the football program.

---He also oversees Cal’s revenue-sharing program and develops the NIL strategy for the football players.  In other words, he decides how and how much the players will be paid. That is critical in recruitment of transfers from other schools and from high schools. These issues are the reasons the general manager position was created, as players are now allowed to accept money.

--- Rivera’s contract says he reports directly to the chancellor (Rich Lyons), indicating he has the right to hire and fire the head coach.

--- Rivera has a buyout of $250,000, which means that if he leaves his position before the end of the 2026 season he must pay the university $250,000.

That last item is important because the 64-year-old Rivera was a two-time NFL coach of the year and has shown an interest in returning to the NFL as a head coach. He interviewed for the Arizona Cardinals’ vacant head coaching position last January.

Is Rivera worth all this? The simple answer is an emphatic “yes.”

No one seems more qualified for the Cal job than Rivera.

He was a star linebacker at Cal, so he knows the school and the football program intimately.

Fund-raising is one of the tasks of a general manager, and Rivera has been involved in fund-raising at Cal for years, so he knows what that involves.

He was an NFL head coach for 13 years, and while he was at Washington he acted as the team’s general manager, although he did not carry that title. So he knows how a general manager works, and he is skilled in talent assessment, which is vital in this era of frequent transfer movement.

His salary at Cal is a pittance compared with what he earned in the NFL.  His contract as head coach of the NFL Washington franchise paid him $7 million a year.

He knows the job, he knows the school, and he knows football talent.

Already he has elevated expectations and generated excitement in the Cal football program.

He raised the bar of expectations by firing head coach Justin Wilcox before the 2025 season was over when the Bears had a winning record (6-5). He showed that merely a winning record is not good enough anymore.

He also helped build excitement about the Cal football program by hiring Cal alumnus Tosh Lupoi as the new head coach, although some would say that hiring Lupoi was a no-brainer.

Although Lupoi gets most of the credit for Cal’s highly rated 2027 recruiting class. Rivera should get some of the praise because he has the final word on revenue-sharing and NIL payments to recruits and presumably he has a say in talent evaluation.