Notebook: Price tags for top coaches reaching stratosphere

Good news for all of us mere mortals worried about next month's mortgage payment ...

The $3 million per year threshold for top college football coaches is about to be crossed. Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione admitted at the Orange Bowl that Bob Stoops would have almost reached that mark had the Sooners won the national championship.

Bob Stoops isn't having much trouble feeding his family. (Getty Images)

Stoops would have made approximately $2.66 million with the addition of incentive bonuses with an Oklahoma win. The Sooners got blown out, but the point is that $3 million per year isn't far away. Currently, there are at least nine I-A coaches making more than $2 million per year. An estimated 35 make at least $1 million.

Nick Saban left LSU making an average of $2.6 million per year. Either Texas' Mack Brown (new 10-year, $26 million contract) or Stoops is believed to be the game's highest-paid coach. Stoops made approximately $2.51 million in 2004 after incentives.

This at a time when NCAA president Myles Brand is preaching financial restraint. The problem is any talk of financial reform is hit by double roadblocks. The NCAA is limited legally by what it can do to curb spending. Second, more and more athletic departments have become separate "corporations" responsible for their own budget and profit.

Try telling any corporation it has to limit salaries and expenditures in a competitive market. The hamster long ago hit the treadmill. You've got to win to keep producing revenue. In order to win, you've got to pay top dollar to coaches.

"The economic model for college athletics has to be one of the worst on record ..." said Castiglione. "None of us like it but it's part of the (landscape). Let's face it, we are the NCAA. If we don't like it, we're the ones responsible for coming up with a different plan. We have to quit complaining about this model and give ourselves a chance to survive."

That comes from an administrator at the top of his game. Castiglione helped lead a $100 million capital campaign that improved Oklahoma's facilities. But a lot of that money came from the momentum generated by the 2000 national championship and subsequent Big 12 titles and championship games.

Even then, there's always another school around the corner willing to do more.

"Because of the antitrust laws, the NCAA is very constrained in the way it can actually limit the way of expenditures," said Robert Hemenway, the Kansas chancellor and chairman of the NCAA board of directors.

It has only been 10 years since Florida's Steve Spurrier was the first to break the $1 million (per season) barrier. It was 23 years ago that some were outraged when Texas A&M's Jackie Sherrill became the first coach to sign a million-dollar contract. Not per year -- the total package. Sherrill's original deal was six years for $1.722 million ($287,000 average per season).

After a failed shot at the NFL, Spurrier took $1.5 million to return to college at South Carolina. He designated that $250,000 of that be given to his assistants.

Stoops gets an automatic $100,000 every Jan. 1. If Oklahoma reaches the promised land of a national championship the bonuses could total $350,000-$400,000. That's the going rate of keeping a top coach at a top program.