On Hugh Freeze's salary at Auburn: SEC football coaching salaries continue to skyrocket

Story updated following Tennessee coach Josh Heupel’s new contract.

AUBURN – Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze will make $6.5 million in his first season with the Tigers. Ten years ago, that would have made Freeze the highest paid coach in the SEC, ahead of Alabama’s Nick Saban at $5.5 million.

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Today? It makes Freeze tied for the ninth-highest paid coach in the league.

Here’s what the SEC football coaches’ salaries will look like entering 2023:

• Nick Saban, Alabama: $11.7 million
• Kirby Smart, Georgia: $11.25 million
• Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M: $9.5 million
• Brian Kelly, LSU: $9.5 million
• Josh Heupel, Tennessee: $9 million
• Lane Kiffin, Ole Miss: $9 million
• Mark Stoops, Kentucky: $9 million
• Billy Napier, Florida: $7.4 million
• Shane Beamer, South Carolina: $6.5 million (raise following 2022 season)
• Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri: $6.5 million (extension following 2022 season)
• Hugh Freeze, Auburn: $6.5 million
• Sam Pittman, Arkansas: $6.2 million
• Clark Lea, Vanderbilt: $3.75 million
• Zach Arnett, Mississippi State: $3 million

Half the head coaches in the SEC make $9 million or more annually. That’s remarkable. And just three currently have even made the SEC title game: Saban, Smart and Kelly.

How times have changed, mainly due to media rights.

In February, the SEC announced an annual revenue distribution of about $55 million per school. Those figures include television revenue, bowl revenue, College Football Playoff revenue and NCAA men’s basketball tournament revenue, and that figure will only rise.

Why will it rise? The SEC’s new media rights deal with ESPN, that’s why.

Starting in 2024, the deal will see ESPN and ABC become the exclusive home of the SEC’s premium football package and basketball events until 2033/34. The contract is worth $3 billion, according to the New York Times, meaning the SEC will get an annual payment of $300 million, which is over five times more than the yearly $55 million it received from CBS.

It’s also possible Disney could pay more when Oklahoma and Texas join the SEC, in order to keep the SEC happy.

And that isn’t even close to the Big Ten’s new media rights deal, by the way.

The Big Ten recently finalized media rights contracts with CBS, Fox and NBC that will total more than $8 billion over seven years, making it the most lucrative conference rights deal in the history of college athletics. That’s up from the Big Ten’s most recent deal with ESPN that garnered them $440 million.

But back to the SEC.

Just five years ago, following Gus Malzahn’s big raise after the 2017 season, this is how the coaching salaries looked:

• Nick Saban, Alabama: $11.1 million
• Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M: $7.5 million
• Gus Malzahn, Auburn: $7 million
• Dan Mullen, Florida: $6 million
• Jeremy Pruitt, Tennessee: $3.8 million
• Kirby Smart, Georgia: $3.75 million
• Mark Stoops, Kentucky: $3.75 million
• Chad Morris, Arkansas: $3.5 million
• Ed Orgeron, LSU: $3.5 million
• Will Muschamp, South Carolina: $3.1 million
• Matt Luke, Ole Miss: $3 million
• Derek Mason, Vanderbilt: $2.7 million
• Joe Moorhead, Mississippi State: $2.7 million
• Barry Odom, Missouri: $2.35 million

Today, that Malzahn contract would place him 8th in the league in salary.

Ten years ago, these were the top-paid SEC football coaches, all landing within the top 50 nationally:

• Nick Saban, Alabama: $5.32 million
• Les Miles, LSU: $3.86 million
• Gene Chizik, Auburn: $3.5 million
• Steve Spurrier, South Carolina: $3.3 million
• Will Muschamp, Florida: $3.3 million
• Mark Richt, Georgia: $3.2 million
• Dan Mullen, Mississippi State: $2.65 million
• Gary Pinkel, Missouri: $2.35 million
• Derek dooley, Tennessee: $2 million
• Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M: $2 million

There are six coaches (Saban, Kirby Smart, Jimbo Fisher, Brian Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Mark Stoops) that will make more than $9 million annually this year. That’s nearly double what Saban made 10 years ago.

Coaching salaries in the SEC, and across the country, are only going up, up, up, and with the emergence of Name, Image, Likeness, college football will hardly be recognizable from what it was just 10 years ago, if we’re not already there.