Mike Gundy Makes $3.65M in 2015 … Is That a Good Deal?

The new NCAA football coaching salary database was released last week, and (as always) it was pretty interesting. Mike Gundy is slated to make $3.65 million this season with potential of a bonus payout of $550,000 (presumably for beating OU or winning a national title).

That’s a lot of dough.

But Oklahoma State’s athletic department also generates over $100 million annually (or something close to that) and Gundy is its most important employee. When you look at it like that, it’s not that bad.

There are other ways to look at it, too. For instance, Gundy is No. 22 when it comes to the highest-paid coaches. I don’t really think he’s the 22nd-best coach. I’d put him in the top 15. Here’s who’s ahead of him (total salary on the far right).

But what if we look at it like this.

I ranked all the coaches by how many wins they average per year for their careers with the team they are currently coaching (including this year).[1. These numbers aren’t exact because I used 0.5 as a multiplier for this season and not all teams have played exactly half their season … but they’re close enough.]

Gundy comes in No. 29 on this list averaging 8.6 wins a year. Among FBS Power 5 coaches, that’s pretty good. Then I ranked coaches by how cheap they are. Gundy is not cheap (but he’s also very good). He comes in as the 97th-cheapest coach in the country (several didn’t have salaries).

To figure out which schools are getting good deals, I added those two rankings together (I ranked wins per year with No. 1 as the best and No. 128 as the worst and salary with No. 1 as the cheapest and No. 128 as the most expensive). Like golf, lower is better.

Among Power 5 schools, Gundy actually comes in as the 27th best deal (so to speak). Brian Kelly is the best. He averages nine wins a year and gets paid $1.2 million (that can’t be right, can it — his salary is less than the Rutgers coach? How much TD Jesus money is he getting under the table?) David Shaw is second. He averages 10.2 wins a year and makes $2.2 million (!)

The problem with ranking coaches like this is that a lot of guys (Gary Patterson comes to mind) that rank ahead of Gundy have coached the same team but not inside a Power 5 conference.

The other problem is that not all wins are created equal. The difference between 3-5 wins is basically nothing. You wouldn’t pay more for a coach who wins five games a year than three. But how much more would you pay for a coach that wins 13 games a year than 11? How much more valuable is a national title every year than going 11-2?

Here’s the full list stopping at Gundy.

It’s interesting to think about. And regardless of what the numbers say, I still think OSU is getting a good deal on Gundy nationally. From where they were to where he brought them, it’s been quite a ride.