In a year when 20 college football coaching jobs have come open, with many more firings and resignations and conscious uncouplings likely on the way, Iowa State figured to be low on the totem pole in picking out a new coach. The Cyclones have one of the smallest budgets in the Big 12, they have no tradition to speak of, they're far away from any major recruiting ground and they have to share a small state with another power conference program that just went 12-0.
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Given its institutional disadvantages, Iowa State looked like it would end up with a disappointing hire. But instead, the Cyclones shocked the country by luring top up-and-comer Matt Campbell from Toledo, who beat ISU earlier this year.How on earth did the Cyclones stage that coup? There's really only one answer, and it's the obvious one: money. ISU upped the ante considerably for Campbell. The Cyclones never paid former coach Paul Rhoads more than $1.8 million per year in base salary, but Campbell will start at $2 million per year.
Let's take a trip back to a simpler time: 2006. Just nine years ago, Campbell's salary would have seemed absurd, as only nine coaches made $2 million in base salary. In 2014, a minimum of 40 coaches made $2 million in pure base salary; the actual number is likely much more, as this one only includes schools that responded to an open records request.Even more jarring: In 1999, only five coaches made more than $1 million per year. In 2014, over half of the 128 FBS coaches did.Conventional wisdom holds that what appears to be a salary bubble eventually is going to burst—that schools can't keep spending money like this on coaches. But the 2015 coaching market is telling us something else. It's not that schools aren't spending outside their means; they just have far more resources than anyone thought.Even schools outside the power conferences are preparing to spend money like never before:
P.J. Fleck has reason to celebrate. —Photo by Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports
The elephant in the room is that while coaching pay is skyrocketing—and there's nothing wrong with that in itself—the price of on-field labor has stayed flat at the cost of an athletic scholarship, however the NCAA is currently defining it. We already know that it's disingenuous for schools to claim that they're broke when they're bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The spike in coaching salaries simply highlights the amount of money gushing through major college football. It's money that could be used just as easily to pay players as it is to pay coaches.Let LSU demonstrate. Tigers boosters raised $15 million in a few days to fire coach Les Miles and pay his buyout, though the Tigers ended up not firing him. Regardless of the final decision on Miles, the money was there, and lots of it. Why were the boosters so eager to fire Miles? Simple: They wanted to win more.Boosters already pay many head coaches' salaries. For instance, Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald is technically the "Dan and Susan Jones Family Head Football Coach" as part of an endowment program. Boosters also pay for the majority of facilities upgrades, including the famed Alabama locker room with a waterfall.If boosters are willing to do everything they can to pay for a top-notch football program, it stands to reason that they would absolutely pay for the thing that contributes most directly to on-field success. Talented players.At this point, there is no excuse. Arguments the NCAA used a decade ago, or even five years ago, to prohibit player payment no longer work. Not when the Houston is offering to pay more for a coach than what Texas once did.Schools aren't spending recklessly—they're spending because the money is there. And if the money is there to pay management, it's certainly there to pay labor.
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