Who is the best college football coach in the country for the money? The calculations have been made and the results are not all that surprising. When it comes to a school’s return on investment in football, the top three best college football coaches for the money are: #1 University of Notre Dame's Brian Kelly, #2 Florida State University's Jimbo Fisher and #3 University of Alabama's Nick Saban.
Since taking the reigns of their respective programs, all three coaches have helped their schools regain their positions back atop college football's elite. Brian Kelly helped the Fighting Irish reach the 2012 BCS National Championship game, accumulating a 21-5 record over the last two seasons while earning approximately $1.09 million a year. Similarly, Jimbo Fisher led the Florida State Seminoles to a 26-2 record and 2013 BCS National Championship and the 2012 Orange Bowl Title crowns. Fisher salary was more than double that of Kelly's, earning approximately $2.75 million a year. Nick Saban, who is widely considered one of the top game day coaches in all of football, helped the Alabama Crimson Tide capture the 2012 BCS National Championship (against Notre Dame) while garnering a record of 24-3 on the largest salary in college football - a cool $5.54 million.
Coaches from the "big five" power conferences dominate the the list, including Michigan State's Mark Dantonio (#4), Georgia's Mark Richt (#11), Ohio State's Urban Meyer (#19) and Arizona's Rich Rodriquez (#24). In fact, the SEC has the most coaches of any conference with six, which the Pac-12 comes in a close second with five, followed by the ACC with two. The non-power conferences are represented by University of Central Florida's George O'Leary (#7), Fresno State University's Tim DeRutyer (#8), and Rice University's David Bailiff (#16), among others.
Ranking the quality of a team is never easy. Ranking the quality of a coach is even harder. There are so many factors that go into determining what exactly makes a good coach: wins and losses, recruiting success, overall football knowledge, the list goes on and on. What is most important to remember is that while a coach may excel at any number of these traits, history has shown that they certainly are not irreplaceable.
In compiling this list, we concluded that the best way to rank a coach relative to his peers is not just based on the number of wins and loses alone but the strength of those wins, as well as how much a coach wins and losses as compared to his salary and the total resources he has. The two variables used in the calculation are as follows:
Sagarin Win Percentage – Acknowledging that not all 10 win seasons are made equal, this measure uses each team’s Sagarin number for the 2012 and 2013 seasons to capture differences in the strength of schedule for each team. A team’s Sagarin win percentage for a season is calculated by multiplying its actual win percentage by the ratio between its Sagarin number for that season and the average Sagarin number for every team in the dataset.
Coach’s Share of Football Expenses – A variable that captures exactly what it says, the percentage of a team’s football expenses that is allocated to the coach's salary.
For each of these variables, a corresponding measure was constructed to calculate how many standard deviations away from the mean it fell. This is meant to quantify just how much greater or less each school/coach/team was compared to the average school/coach/team in the data-set.
While each team has different budgets from which they can allocate salaries to coaches, this difference can be somewhat neutralized by considering instead the share of football expenses allocated to the coach. A more cost effective coach would be paid a relatively smaller share of his school’s football expenses as compared to his peers, while providing a better winning percentage, as adjusted by the Sagarin number.
Using the most recent full season data sets available (2011-12 and 2012-13), a coach had to satisfy two basic criteria to make the list: 1) He was still coaching at the university this season, and 2) had to a non-losing record (.500 or above) during both seasons. The first criteria provides for consistency, the second sets a minimum threshold that insures that the coaches were not simply “one-hit-wonders”. Even with both criteria in place, only a handful of coaches were filtered from both lists, most notably: Charlie Strong, James Franklin, Dave Clawson and Steve Sarkisian.
Jason Belzer is Founder of GAME, Inc. and a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Sports Law at Rutgers University. Follow him on Twitter @JasonBelzer.
*Special thanks To Matthew Lee for his aide in compiling data for this analysis.
