Mark Stoops is the Ninth-Highest-Paid Coach in College Football

The once ubiquitous USA Today doesn’t steal too many headlines in 2024, but the annual college football coaches’ salary database always stirs the pot. It’s hitting at the wrong time for Mark Stoops.

Days after the Wildcats fell to Vanderbilt, their third SEC home loss of the season, USA Today revealed that Mark Stoops is the ninth-highest-paid coach in college football. This year he is set to make $9,013,600, a smidge over the $9 million Lane Kiffin earns in the No. 10 spot.

Stoops is the longest-tenured coach in the SEC, the richest league in the sport. Stoops is still behind Brian Kelly (LSU), Kalen DeBoer (Alabama), Steve Sarkisian (Texas), and Kirby Smart (Georgia). Twelve of the Top 25 highest earners in the sport are from the SEC.

NEW: 2024 Highest Paid College Football Coaches💰https://t.co/F4otx8Q3mz pic.twitter.com/fDhk9dgfuf

— On3 (@On3sports) October 16, 2024

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Have we Reached the Peak in College Football Coaching Salaries?

It’s easy to predict the reaction from most Kentucky fans upon seeing this news. “How is the guy losing to Vanderbilt the ninth-highest-paid coach in the country?” He’s the longest-tenured coach in the richest league in the history of college athletics at the school where he’s the winningest coach. That answer won’t suffice for most, so I’ll skip to the hand-wringing and move on to another facet of this that I think means a lot more for the sport.

We’ve seen this cycle countless times. A coach has a great season with a few years left in his contract, so Jimmy Sexton leverages other coaching vacancies to get his client a big raise. Even if it doesn’t work out, the coaches and agents all get paid enormous buyouts when that coach is fired.

Stoops’ buyout through Dec. 1 is $44.4 million, which is on par with his peers except for Kirby Smart, who would be owed $118 million if he was terminated before the end of the season.

These are staggering numbers, but the finances around college athletics are changing. The House settlement will force athletic departments to allocate $20-$22 million per year to directly compensate student-athletes. Athletic departments are penny-pinching to balance budgets without cutting sports.

You know where there’s an easy place to find some extra money? From the highest-paid coach’s salaries. In Mike Elko’s contract, Texas A&M added a stipulation that allows them to renegotiate pending the “changes in the financial model for college athletics.”

Student-athletes are finally going to get a piece of that pie and it is eventually going to come from these coaches’ enormous salaries, much to Jimmy Sexton’s chagrin.