Cal Football: Coaches' Salary Report -- Justin Wilcox 7th in Pac-12
A quick list of the notable things we learned from USA TODAY's recently released database on college football coaches' 2020 salaries:
---Cal's Justin Wilcox is the seventh-highest paid coach in the Pac-12 this season with a total pay of $3,276,248.
---Wilcox accepted a voluntary pay cut of $228,756 this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
---Of the 10 coaches at public universities in the Pac-12, only UCLA's Chip Kelly and Arizona State's Herman Edwards did not take voluntary pay cuts.
---The lowest paid of the FBS coaches USA Today obtained records for is Coastal Carolina's Jamey Chadwell, at $375,000. He took a pay cut of $56,034.
---Alabama's Nick Saban, the highest-paid coach at $9.3 million, took no pay cut. Neither did LSU's Ed Oregon, whose total pay is nearly $9 million.
---The biggest pay cut was taken by Clemson's Dabo Swinney, who reduced his take by $1,250,000, which is more than 41 FBS coaches will make this season.
---Only one Pac-12 coach will get paid less this season than Oregon's Mario Cristobal, whose team won the Pac-12 title last year and is favored to win it again this season. Only Oregon State's Jonathan Smith is scheduled to make less this season than Crisobal's $2.5 million. Washington's Jimmy Lake, who has never been a head coach any level, will make more than Cristobal. (Of course, a lot of us would like to be underpaid like Cristobal.)
---No Pac-12 coach' is among the top 17 highest-paid coaches in the nation this year, and the conference's highest-paid coach last year (Chris Petersen of Washington) is no longer coaching.
---Four coaches will earn more than $8 million -- Alabama's Nick Saban, LSU's Ed Oregeron, Clemson's Dabo Swinney, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh -- while the highest-paid Pac-12 coach is Stanford's David Shaw, at a little more than $4.6 million. The descrepancy is even greater if you consider that the cost of living in the Bay Area and several Pac-12 venues is considerably higher than it is in places such as Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or Clemson, South Carolina, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
---Part I: Eight Southeastern Conference coaches will earn more this season than any Pac-12 coach.
---Part II: SEC teams have won 10 national championships the past 14 years; the Pac-12 has won none in that span.
---Mel Tucker more than doubled his salary when he left Colorado, which paid him about $2.4 million last season, to coach Michigan State, where he will earn a little more than $5 million this season.
---Mike Leach's salary rose from $3.75 million last year at Washington State to $5 million this year at Mississippi State.
---Even with the voluntary salary reductions, the average total pay for all FBS head coaches was $2.7 million, an increase of 1.1% over last year. If there had been no salary reductions, the average total pay would have been $2.79 million, an increase of 4.5%.
Here is a ranking of Pac-12 coaches' total payout for 2020 (with their national ranking in parentheses), according to the USA TODAY database:
--1. (18) David Shaw, Stanford -- $4,812,917
--2. (20) Kyle Whittingham, Utah -- $4,634,178
--3. (21) Clay Helton, USC -- $4,569, 507
--4. (23) Chip Kelly, UCLA -- $4,300,000
--5. (36) Herman Edwards, Arizona State -- $3,640,00
--6. (43) Kevin Sumlin, Arizona -- $3,283,333
--7. (44) Justin Wilcox, Cal -- $3,276,248
--8. (50) Karl Dorrell, Colorado -- $3,040,000
--9. (52) Jimmy Lake, Washington -- $2,912,500
--10. (55) Nick Rolovich, Washington State -- $2,870,000
--11. (57) Mario Cristobal, Oregon -- $2,542,500
--12. (63) Jonathan Smith, Oregon State -- $2,288,000
Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53
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