Overpaid and underpaid college football coaches in salary data
USA TODAY Sports' salary database highlights Hugh Freeze, Billy Napier and Luke Fickell as being overpaid, while Kurt Cignetti stands out as a value option.
- Former quarterback Andrew Luck has been hired as the general manager of the Stanford football team.
- Luck was given full authority over the program, including personnel decisions, fundraising and player purchases.
- The role of a college football general manager varies from school to school and there is no standard job description or salary structure.
- Luck aims to rebuild the program by integrating Stanford's academic ideals with the new realities of NIL and the transfer portal.
A 1930s Vow Boys poster hangs on the wall of his office. Over there is Thunder Chickens from the 1970s. There was also a dance at the 2011 Orange Bowl, where Andrew Luck led a Stanford team that declared victory with character and brutality.
Luck is proud to tell you the legacy of his brief but beautiful triumph at Stanford, where players and coaches believe you can win at a high level at one of college football's greatest academic institutions. Then it was done.
The pre-war freshman class vowed never to lose to USC, but it didn't – and snapped USC's 27-game winning streak in the process. A gutsy, outstanding defensive line, these Thunder Chicks (named after the Montana motorcycle gang) showed that Stanford could play mean defense during quarterback Jim Plunkett's 1970 Heisman Trophy season and beyond.
Now comes the latest iteration to win the right way (with character and Despite college football's current state of individualistic hedonism, the current head of athletics at Stanford believes this approach can replicate past success.
Yes, that's Luck's new job as the general manager of the Stanford football team.
“We wanted to write our own story,” Luck said. “But it’s going to take a little bit of a different style to be successful.”
He paused, shadows of the past lingering in his office, his voice heavy with weight.
“We've been given a blank canvas here,” he continued. “How cool would it be to be able to create work and structure according to your vision?”
Luck, without a doubt, is Stanford football. Stanford President Jonathan Levine empowered him to do what must be done at every level of the program. From player procurement, to personnel (hiring/firing coaches), to fundraising, all the way down to the details of working with campus partners so that everyone on the farm is aligned and on the same page.
This is a college football general manager. Keep your hands on everything, all the way up to your elbows.
Not a general manager who gets a job and a seven-figure parachute salary because he knows the head coach. Or a general manager who was hired because he was a great recruiter and the head coach is tired of begging teenagers and transfer portal egos to play for state colleges — and doesn't want to deal with the salary cap anyway.
Or the former CEO of a multinational company who was hired to oversee all sports matters, then hired a general manager to run football, and next thing you know, the long-time respected and highly successful athletic director announced his retirement.
On this uncharted path, where power struggles abound, the boundaries and goals of this work are not specific, but unique to each school. Power, titles, and high salaries are conferred rather than earned out of dissatisfaction with an evolving system.
Of the 49 Final Four conference schools where USA TODAY Sports could determine compensation amounts, general manager salaries this season were all high, with no clear definition of value.
So, to recap: there is no clear value structure or common job description.
College football has become an athletic competition that mimics everything about the NFL — either reluctantly or enthusiastically, depending on the school. This includes mimicking the NFL's personnel department hierarchy. It even borrows the term “general manager,” although the responsibilities of the person holding that title vary from project to project.
“It's different things for different guys,” said LSU coach Brian Kelly, whose general manager Austin Thomas, whose salary is on the high end of the GM scale ($800,000 per year), became college football's first high-profile title-winner during his first tenure in Baton Rouge in 2016.
Thomas now serves in the senior associate athletic director/football management role. For lack of a better term, LSU's front office also includes personnel with the following titles: Senior Assistant AD/Assistant General Manager, Director of Player Retention, Director of Player Personnel, Associate Director of Player Personnel, Assistant Director of Player Personnel, Player Personnel Analyst and Director of Scouting/Personnel Strategies.
There are costs to being a general manager in college football, and they vary widely from school to school.
According to data obtained by USA Today, at the top of the general manager compensation list is former NFL general manager Michael Lombardi, who was brought to Chapel Hill by new Tar Heels coach Bill Belichick and has an annual salary of up to $1.5 million. Insert your player review joke here.
At the bottom of the pecking order is Billy High, Tennessee's executive director of football management, who basically does what every general manager does, but he doesn't have an official title because coach Josh Heupel is still at the helm. High's income is a measly $150,000.
Then there's Luck's position at Stanford: a legal operations manager who oversees all things football and takes the necessary steps throughout the program to change the parts that aren't working. He's Stanford's version of John Lynch, another former Cardinal who found great success as the general manager of the San Francisco 49ers.
That's where this story begins and ends.
“College football was starting to change, but Stanford wasn't embracing it,” Luck said. “Not only do we have to embrace it, we have to change the entire structure of the organization.”
So Luck — rather than Stanford's traditional athletic administration — fired head coach Troy Taylor this offseason and hired Luck's former offensive coordinator in the NFL, Frank Reich, to run the team as interim coach until he found his feet on the matter.
No other general manager in college football has such power. They're lucky enough to overturn coaches in high school or players in the transfer portal.
But Luck's salary isn't public because he works at a private university, where he has personnel authority and is deeply involved in recruiting and player purchasing — the core of any expansion of team sports. Players win games and coaches put players in positions to win games. General managers keep lists.
Stanford's foundation is strong, built on the ideals that the university stands for and what college football is all about. That influence became even stronger recently when former Stanford player Bradford Freeman donated $50 million to the football program.
Luck believes there is an elite group of high school players (and portal players) who still want the academic experience and the ability to make money off their name, image and likeness. As general manager, it's his job to find these players and convince them that Stanford is the best option for their future.
Or as the former blue-chip recruit from Houston said matter-of-factly, “I signed with Stanford after a 1-11 season.”
It doesn't look much better now. Stanford has not won since 2018 and receives only a 30% share of media rights revenue from the ACC. In the past three years alone, the Cardinals have lost numerous elite players due to their inability to compete with the sport's new salary structure.
But get this: From 2010 (Luck's final season) through 2018, Stanford won 94 games in nine seasons. There were six double-digit win seasons, two nine-win seasons and one eight-win season.
The players who signed with Stanford over the past decade are the same players Lucky Stars is recruiting now. Those who want the Stanford experience and the money—not the other way around.
“Selling this great university is a fun part of the job,” Luck said. “My job is to create the conditions that allow our players to create their own legacies.”
Shortly after he was hired last November, after fielding congratulatory calls and carefully picking the opinions of people he trusted, Luck sat in his office at Stanford when reality hit him.
This is his first job. Yes, his first real job.
If you don't think playing in the NFL is a job, that is. Because playing at Stanford has never been and will never be a job.
“I know our student-athlete model can exist in the NIL era. I know that,” Luck said. “We're going to be firmly rooted in the non-negotiables. We're going to keep doubling or tripling down on the things that you know are important, but also embracing the new and the different.”
It’s not just about writing your own story. If you can pull it off, it's a bestseller.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X @MattHayesCFB.