On Wednesday USA TODAY Sports released its most up-to-date list of college football coach salaries. Some of the numbers are shocking. Mike Gundy of the Oklahoma State Cowboys is the highest earner in the Big 12 Conference. Deion Sanders, aka Coach Prime, brings all of his pomp and circumstance to the Colorado Buffaloes and is the fourth-highest-paid coach in the Big 12.
Fanbases across college football want to know where their coach ranked. In all actuality, they want to know if their head coach is overpaid. Fans scoured the list, found their favorite program’s coach, and looked above and below to see what “class” they were in. Three fanbases in the Big 12 might be disappointed to see where their head coach ranks among the most overpaid in college football, or at least among their peers. Who are the three most overpaid head coaches in the Big 12?
Dave Aranda, Baylor Bears
2024 Salary: $4.54 Million
Dave Aranda is 25-29 in his time at Baylor and has seen the program fall from 12-2 his second year to 3-9 last year and 2-4 this year. But what has to sting the folks in Waco? Jeff Traylor, head coach of the UTSA Road Runners, is making just over half of that. While Traylor has coached in Conference USA and the American Athletic Conference, he’s 41-18 in his career.
In the Power Four, former Baylor assistant Joey McGuire is the head coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders making $250,000 less annually than Aranda. McGuire is 20-12 in his three years at Tech and is 3-0 in the Big 12 this year. And if Baylor wanted to pony up a little more? For $5.25 Million the Kansas State Wildcats have Chris Klieman, who’s built one of the Big 12’s best programs.
Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State Cowboys
2024 Salary: $7.75 Million
It’s not that Mike Gundy has never been a good coach. Just last season, the Cowboys were 10-4 and in a Big 12 title game. It’s that the roller coaster seems to be ending, and the 2023 season feels like it’s going to be more of an outlier. After three straight 10-win seasons from 2015-2017, OSU has just two 10-win seasons since.
Admittedly, part of what works against Gundy is that his high price tag is, bluntly, that of a top-tier coach. Mario Cristobal, current head coach of the Miami Hurricanes, has revamped their entire program and has them as a favorite in the ACC in just his third year for just $33,000 more. At Oregon, he took the program to the College Football Playoff as well. What’s most impressive about Cristobal has been his work within the transfer portal and NIL spaces. Cristobal is a coach for the future of college football, where Gundy feels like its past.
Sonny Dykes, TCU Horned Frogs
2024 Salary: $5 Million
Dykes was just in a National Title game, where he and a large number of players he inherited from the previous regime lost in historic fashion. Since then, Dykes’ Horned Frogs are 8-10, with some embarrassing losses. Dykes makes just $250,000 less than Klieman, but it gets worse when you see his losses. Of his eight Big 12 Conference losses, five are to programs paying their head coach less money. It’s not that Kirby Smart, Georgia Bulldog head coach, is undefeated as the highest-paid coach in the sport. But Georgia has lost just 3 games in four years, and trends like that do tend to have people connecting the dots between paychecks and winning.