RALEIGH N.C.
For any of the football coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference, winning the league title surely would mean a great deal. Financially, it means the most to Maryland’s Ralph Friedgen.
Should he guide the Terrapins to an ACC title, Friedgen will earn a bonus of about $347,000 the most lucrative incentive clause of its kind for a coach at one of the league’s public schools, The Associated Press found in a review of ACC coaches’ contracts.
Across the nation’s most famous college basketball conference, the price of hiring and keeping a football coach has never been higher as the ACC tries to keep up with skyrocketing salaries nationwide.
Million-dollar-a-year coaches have become routine, especially in the ACC’s neighboring Southeastern Conference, where Nick Saban got $4 million a year from Alabama.
Now even in hoops country, football coaches are raking it in.
This past offseason, N.C. State gave coach Tom O’Brien a seven-year contract worth about $1.1 million annually to pry him away from conference rival Boston College. At North Carolina, Butch Davis got a seven-year deal worth an average of about $1.9 million a year on par with what Hall of Fame basketball coach Roy Williams makes.
