Forbes names Brian Kelly best coach for the money

In the high stakes world of college football, head coaches are getting paid more and more to be the face of highly profitable programs. And after Forbes ran their calculations, they named Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly the best coach for the money over the past two seasons.

Kelly beat out Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher and Alabama’s Nick Saban for the title, with Kelly’s salary just a fraction of the program’s overall expenses compared to the last two national champs.

Our friends over at CFT give you an idea as to how Forbes reached their conclusions:

To put this list together, Forbes took Sagarin win percentages and a coach’s share of football expenses into consideration. There may be no perfect way to analyze a coach’s value to a program that everyone can agree on, but under the conditions used for this particular ranking this sounds like a good enough way to go about it. Using this method, Kelly comes out on top with the Irish thanks to a 21-5 record and just 3.36 percent of the football program’s expenses.

While Kelly earns other income streams (and as a private institution, Notre Dame doesn’t need to disclose Kelly’s entire compensation), Forbes listed Kelly’s salary as $1,088,179, just over three-percent of the program’s expenses, which measured at $32,373, 258.

Fisher’s $2.75 million salary was almost 12 percent of FSU’s annual costs, while Saban’s $5.5 million was over 13 percent of Alabama’s whopping $41.5 million budget.

Here is the entire Top 10 (salary as percentage of program cost):

1. Brian Kelly, Notre Dame (3.36%)
2. Jimbo Fisher, Florida State (11.74%)
3. Nick Saban, Alabama (13.34%)
4. Mark Dantonio, Michigan State (8.5%)
5. Steve Spurrier, South Carolina (13.3%)
6. Dabo Swinney, Clemson (12.77%)
7. George O’Leary, Central Florida (10.18%)
8. Tim DeRutyer, Fresno State (7.51%)
9. Pete Lembo, Ball State (6.73%)
10. Art Briles, Baylor (11.95%)

(H/T: College Football Talk)