Fourth of an five-part series

BATON ROUGE, La. – The Beechcraft turboprop jet sped down the runway and rapidly climbed into the Louisiana sky, banking west toward Dallas.

Hours earlier, Louisiana State University Chancellor Mark A. Emmert had fired the school's football coach, Gerry DiNardo, after back-to-back losing seasons. Now, seated comfortably in a $3 million, nine-seat plane owned by LSU boosters, Emmert was on a mission:

He was looking to hire a new coach.

Ordinarily, a university chancellor wouldn't have gotten so deeply involved in such a search, but students and boosters at football-crazed LSU were desperate to win. The school had gone through seven head coaches in 19 years, posting only a handful of winning seasons. Now it was building a costly addition to its 80,000-seat stadium and needed to fill those seats.

"I wanted the new coach to know he had the backing of the chancellor – particularly given our history of rotating coaches," Emmert said.

In Texas, Emmert consulted Gil Brandt, a former Dallas Cowboys executive, assembling a list of candidates that LSU might lure away from other schools.

Two weeks later, he had his man. Emmert landed Michigan State's Nick Saban with a five-year, $6 million-plus deal that made the 48-year-old the third-highest-paid college football coach in America.

Once upon a time, college coaches were modestly paid teachers. Today, in elite sports programs like LSU's, they are millionaire executives, closer to corporate CEOs than educators.

At top-tier programs, football and basketball coaches earn far more than tenured professors. At $1.2 million annually, Saban earns nearly 17 times the average salary of a full LSU professor – $71,200.

At least 24 head coaches in elite football and basketball programs are paid at least $1 million a year. Increasingly, the bulk of that money comes from boosters, shoe companies, and television deals, not university funds.

Topping the list: Florida's Steve Spurrier, who collects $2 million annually and received a $275,000 signing bonus when he agreed to a new contract two years ago. Nearly half of Spurrier's annual compensation – $950,000 – comes from Nike, which has a five-year deal to outfit the Gators' athletic teams.

Scores of other coaches receive a half-million a year or more. And such perks as housing loans, luxury cars, country-club memberships, free vacations and golden parachutes are now commonplace for coaches in major programs, The Inquirer's six-month investgation of college sports found.

"It worries me," said Joe Dean, the athletic director at LSU, shortly after agreeing to pay Saban $6 million last November. "It's a little out of control. But you can't blame the coach."

As big-time college sports have become a multibillion-dollar entertainment business, the differences between professional and college coaches have all but disappeared. Coaches hop back and forth between pro and college teams, with loyalty determined by the size of the paycheck.

"I think the market gets set in pro ball," Saban said in an interview. "And whether you want to admit it or not, football is the goose that lays the golden egg."

More and more, elite coaches are turning to sports agents to negotiate their contracts – another sign of the blurring of distinctions between college and pro sports and a factor in the spiraling pay packages.

Saban was represented by Jimmy Sexton of Memphis, a well-known agent for professional coaches and players.

"Our deal will help every other coach in America," Sexton said shortly after bolting Michigan State. "Most guys are making $500,000 to $700,000. Our deal is going to help push that up. Maybe not right away, but sooner or later."

The dramatic jump in coaches' pay is one of the major reasons that costs of large college athletic programs are soaring, increasing at a rate four times inflation.

Each time a school bumps up the salary of one of its elite coaches, it creates a ripple effect in the coaching ranks inside and beyond the university. Compensation for coaches in other sports also goes up, followed by pay for athletic directors, administrators and conference executives.

This summer, the University of Florida boosted the salary of Billy Donovan, its men's basketball coach, to $1.2 million – a reward for taking his team to last spring's NCAA Final Four. Within days, athletic director Jeremy Foley gave J. Carol Ross, the school's women's basketball coach, a raise.

Dave Hart, Florida State's athletic director, has a new, 10-year deal that pays him $328,000 annually and offers him rich incentives and bonuses that could add another $1 million to his take in the next decade. Hart, a golfer, also gets memberships at five country clubs, paid for by a booster club.

Coaches and athletic directors contend that the huge salaries and generous perks are justified by the competitiveness of the marketplace. There are a small number of proven, high-profile coaches, they said, and many challenging jobs.

"If we don't pay it, somebody else will," Foley said.

Rob Benford, a sociologist at Southern Illinois University and former adviser to the University of Nebraska athletic department, worries that the inflation in coaches' salaries sends the wrong message.

"I wish we spent as much time recruiting scholars as we do coaches," Benford said. "The values have been turned upside down, and these staggering amounts paid to coaches are only one part of it. "

Even coaches with losing or spotty records are earning big bucks, a review of salaries shows. A single big season can garner a coach millions, while a sudden downturn can spell doom.

Over the last five years, DiNardo, at 32-24-1, had a record nearly identical to Saban's 34-24-1. His LSU team manhandled Saban's Michigan State team, 45-26, in a bowl game. But after three successful years, DiNardo's LSU team was in a tailspin. Meanwhile, Saban's squad had just posted a 9-2 record.

Shortly after LSU suffered an embarrassing loss to Houston last November, DiNardo was sacked with a game left on the schedule and given a $600,000 buyout. The next day, Emmert, Dean and several others got on the plane to Dallas.

"It's no different than a corporation losing money," Dean said. "It's a business. You have to make tough calls sometimes."

These days, most of a coach's pay comes from outside dollars, not university funds. The outside payments allow coaches to earn far more than the caps on university salaries established by many state legislatures – and are perfectly legal.

Nearly $300,000 of Saban's $1.2 million annual salary comes from the Tiger Athletic Foundation, Inc., a tax-exempt booster group that also owns a plane.

Other large sources of outside income are radio/television deals and shoe and apparel contracts from companies such as Nike and adidas. Some high-profile coaches also earn tens of thousands of dollars from summer camps that charge high school athletes up to $500 for a few days of instruction. Still others trade on their positions to collect lucrative speaking fees and commercial endorsements.

Last year, Barry Alvarez, the University of Wisconsin football coach, pocketed $28,000 for addressing Merck Pharmaceuticals, Arthur Andersen, and the Milwaukee-based Goliath Network, university records show. He received another $10,000 for appearing in commercials for a marine-supply dealer and spa distributor. After posting back-to-back Rose Bowl victories, Wisconsin recently pushed Alvarez's salary to $1 million.

Booster clubs also serve as lavish sources of perks for coaches and top athletic-department employees. For example, Wisconsin boosters paid a $15,650 Realtor's fee when Dick Bennett became the Badgers' men's basketball coach, moving from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. They also picked up a $5,713 lease fee for athletic director Pat Richter, paid Richter's cell-phone and health-club fees, and even covered Richter's caddie fee for a pro-am tournament in 1996, university records show.

Taxpayers help to subsidize the spiraling pay packages. Nearly all of the revenue generated by ticket sales, television deals, bowl games and corporate sponsorships is tax-free to the schools. The booster clubs that help underwrite coaches' salaries are charities under the U.S. Tax Code, meaning donors may take deductions on their contributions. The coaches, of course, pay taxes.

College presidents like to talk in lofty terms about the value of amateur athletics. But the only amateurs are the students, who make up an unpaid labor pool. Meanwhile, some coaches earn hundreds of thousands in bonuses, based on the number of wins and championships they collect.

Even when coaches are fired, they often end up winners. Athletic directors buy out the contracts of losing coaches so that their schools can go out and spend even more money to buy new coaches.

Take the case of football coach Danny Ford. He received $1 million in 1990 when Clemson University bought out his contract. Three years later, Ford took over at Arkansas. But after back-to-back 4-7 seasons, he was fired in 1997. This time, he got a $600,000 paycheck.

In 1982, Texas A&M lured football coach Jackie Sherrill from the University of Pittsburgh for a then-shocking $267,000 a year. Today, Sherrill's pay package would be considered miserly by the standards of elite football programs.

R.C. Slocum, A&M's current coach, gets an estimated $1 million a year. Coaches at schools such as Florida, Texas and Tennessee are often the highest-paid and most powerful employees on campus.

At $2 million a year, Spurrier is paid 26 times the average salary of a full professor at Florida. His boss, Jeremy Foley, said that the coach could easily earn that much in the pros.

"We used to say we're not going to compete with the pros," Foley said," but then we see the amount of success football has had and the amount of revenue it generates. Steve Spurrier is the key to that."

Some schools now require coaches to buy out the remaining years of their contracts if they jump ship. But if the university wants a coach badly enough, it will often pick up that added cost.

If Saban is fired, he will receive up to $2 million in severance pay. But if he jumps to the NFL or takes another college job, Saban will owe LSU nothing.

Emmert, a public-policy expert, decided against including a buyout clause when he negotiated Saban's $6 million contract – even though Saban left Michigan State with its football team headed to a major bowl game.

"There didn't seem to be any advantage in forcing a person to stay in a position he didn't want to stay in," Emmert said. "I felt as though Nick was making a commitment to us, and I was taking him at his word."

At that point, Emmert and Saban had known one another for less than two weeks.

Loyalty is almost a quaint idea among elite college coaches, with a handful of notable exceptions, including Penn State's Joe Paterno. They routinely abandon their schools and athletes when other schools approach with high-profile jobs and open checkbooks.

Take Bill Self, a promising young men's basketball coach.

In three years at Tulsa University, the 37-year-old Self posted a 74-27 record and took his team to two consecutive NCAA tournament appearances.

This spring, Tulsa rewarded Self with a $200,000 raise, to $550,000 a year. A few weeks later, Self left Tulsa for the Illinois job, which will pay $825,000 a year. Giddy Illinois officials agreed to pay the $400,000 Self owed Tulsa for leaving.

Ron Guenther, the Illinois athletic director, told the players that Self would help them chase a Big Ten title and then a national championship. Among the qualities he cited were Self's integrity, communications skills, and commitment to academic success.

In big-time college sports, about the only ones not free to move about are the athletes. Unlike coaches, they are forced by the NCAA to sit out a season if they decide to leave one school for another.

When Saban departed Michigan State, he turned in the keys to a white sport-utility vehicle provided by Michigan State supporters. Tennessee football coach Phillip Fulmer tools around Knoxville in a Lexus. Women's basketball coach Pat Summitt drives a Mercedes Benz. Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville gets a gold Mercedes.

Luxury cars are now standard perks for coaches and athletic directors in big-time programs. Dealers provide the cars in return for tickets and advertising. Occasionally, a coach will play a round of golf with a dealer.

Ohio State's athletic department has 77 cars for coaches and athletic administrators provided by dealers. Wisconsin has 66, Florida 55, Tennessee 50, Penn State 30, and LSU 30. Coaches at some schools get not one luxury car but two.

DiNardo said that a successful coach can pretty well write his ticket at a major university.

"It can get a little embarrassing," he said. "Some of the kids don't even have money for a pizza. I'm not blaming the coach. Most of them earn their money. It's just – a lot."

At Michigan State, Saban was paid $697,000. But the Spartans' football program had to play second fiddle to the larger, more prominent University of Michigan program, and that bothered him. And he tussled with Michigan State officials over policies restricting what he could earn from outside endorsements.

"I think that was a real issue for Nick – he felt constrained in what he could do," said Mark Hollis, an assistant athletic director at Michigan State. Hollis said that the university is"far more restrictive [than many schools] on what coaches can do outside the school."

LSU promised in its contract with Saban to work with him to develop outside business ventures.

"Bluntly put, the commitment they were willing to make was pretty substantial," Sexton said. "They needed to make a statement."

Saban's contract guarantees him $250,000 in base pay from the university, plus retirement and fringe benefits; $550,000 in radio, television and Internet payments; and at least $400,000 in other fees, including $290,000 from the Tiger Athletic Foundation. In addition, LSU agreed to pay Saban $100,000 for the month of December 1999, which came before his five-year contract took effect.

Saban can add tens of thousands in income from football camps and by meeting various bonus incentives in his contract, including $50,000 for getting his team into a major bowl game and $25,000 if his team's graduation rate ranks in the top six in the 12-team Southeastern Conference.

Last year, LSU ranked last in the SEC with a 40-percent graduation rate. "We want to change that," Emmert said, noting that Saban had helped to raise money for an academic support center for athletes at Michigan State.

How do LSU officials justify paying a football coach so much money?

Emmert said that the culture of the South revolves around football.

"It's very important," he said. "It's important to the people, the politicians, to the economy."

Emmert expects LSU to have no trouble coming up with the money for Saban, especially with 70 luxury suites and 11,000 seats added to its stadium for this fall.

"If we're filling the stadium, then the cash flow from that covers the added compensation," Emmert said.

Still, he expressed concern about the huge salary gap between Saban and the faculty.

"It causes obvious concern if the institution's highest-paid faculty is making one-tenth" what the football coach is, he said.

Emmert isn't the only one concerned. Gov. Mike Foster said that he worried that Louisianans, whose state ranks second nationally in poverty, place too much emphasis on football and not enough on education. The Saban deal"boggles my mind," he said.

Athletic directors argue that the lucrative deals for football and basketball coaches are justified by the revenue that their teams generate for their schools. At LSU and other elite athletic schools, football and basketball pay the way, supporting less commercial sports, such as field hockey and track.

"We have a wonderful track team that has won many national championships, but it brings in maybe $15,000 in revenue and costs $1 million," Dean said.

Emmert cited the University of Washington's 1998 decision to pay football coach Rick Neuheisel $1.1 million a year as the benchmark he used to set Saban's pay.

"It was what I had in mind when I looked at it," Emmert said.

Neuheisel had received about $700,000 a year at Colorado in his previous job.

"It's pretty justifiable in terms of how much revenue is generated for the entire athletic department," Saban said.

A comparison of coaches' compensation and corporate pay illustrates that Division I-A football coaches are well-paid. In some cases, they are receiving Fortune 500-level pay packages while running programs that would barely qualify as start-ups on Wall Street.

Florida State's Bobby Bowden, arguably the most successful college football coach in the '90s, is paid $1.5 million a year to direct a program with revenue of $18 million.

Now consider Wayne Britt.

Don't recognize that name? Britt has never won a national championship or a bowl game. But he does run a major American corporation, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, with nearly $7.4 billion in sales. But at $1.8 million, including stock options, Britt is paid about the same as Bowden.

Another growing source of income for elite coaches is performance bonuses. Coaches at large schools can boost their incomes by tens of thousands by winning conference championships. A national championship can be worth more than $100,000, contracts show.

Larry Eustachy, the men's basketball coach at Iowa State, enjoyed a remarkable windfall this year, thanks to his highly ranked team.

Eustachy's contract included bonuses of $10,000 for winning the Big Twelve regular-season title, $10,000 for winning the conference tournament, $15,000 for making the NCAA tournament, and $15,000 for each victory in the NCAA tournament. His team's four NCAA wins alone were worth $60,000.

Eustachy also got a $300,000 raise when the school extended his 10-year contract shortly before the Final Four. He is now guaranteed $900,000 annually but can earn more with bonuses.

The dramatic increase prompted state legislator Edward Fallon of Des Moines to introduce legislation to cap coaches' salaries at $300,000 at Iowa's state universities.

"I think sports are valuable, but let's put this in perspective," Fallon said. "College is supposed to be about education. In the state of Iowa, we're looking at budget cuts of some very important programs and paying an individual more money than most people will ever make. It's obscene."

Fallon said that he had received more mail in response to his proposal than about"anything else I've ever done. I heard from a lot of sports fans. Some were very reasonable, and others used very colorful language."

Not all coaches are cashing in. Some highly successful ones at smaller schools are paid modest salaries and rarely receive bonuses. Coaches in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, which includes such schools as West Chester, Bloomsburg and Slippery Rock, have unionized, complaining of low salaries. Some assistant coaches in the conference are eligible for food stamps.

Last year, coach Sharon Pfluger's field hockey and women's lacrosse teams at the College of New Jersey both won national championships. Fourteen of her previous teams also have ascended to that lofty summit. Yet Pfluger, a state employee, didn't get a bonus for her latest accomplishments.

"Years ago, the college had merit pay, but that hasn't been around for years and years," athletic director Kevin A. McHugh said. "I can give her a hug and that's it."

In the early '90s, an NCAA staff report questioned the propriety of coaches earning far more than faculty members and school administrators. But it concluded that college sports' governing body shouldn't set limits on what head coaches can earn.

That's hardly surprising when you consider that top NCAA executives are richly compensated themselves.

In 1998, Cedric Dempsey, the NCAA's president, collected $685,000 in cash and benefits, according to the organization's tax return. His expense account – $65,788 – alone was double the average salary of working Americans. Dempsey also owed the nonprofit NCAA $340,893 on a housing loan, records show.

In the mid-'90s, in the wake of the United Way scandal, Congress passed rules to prevent executives of universities and other nonprofit groups from enriching themselves at their organizations' expenses. But the legislators never defined excessive pay. And the rules were intended to prevent insiders from cheating and stealing, not from collecting huge salaries.

That leaves coaches free to sell their services for whatever they can get.

"You can't blame the coach any more than you can blame Shaquille O'Neal for getting a $100 million contract or Billy Joel for getting $5 million for a concert," said Dean, the LSU athletic director.

What does Dean expect in return for paying Saban $1.2 million a year?

"I need for him to win," Dean said.