In an ongoing effort to bring more math to this site, I decided to delve into the coaches salary information that was published in a USA Today article about 2009 NCAA college football contracts (hat tip to Brian Bennett who found it first for his blog).  Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of missing information (there's no data for 9 schools), and a lot of it in the Big East.  But poor data has never stopped a thorough analysis before, so lets go!

Kragthorpe's total salary is $1,216,000.

Kragthorpe ranks 47th out of 112 reporting schools
     Highest reported: Pete Carroll - USC - $4,386,652)
     Lowest reported: Charlie Weatherbie - Louisiana Monroe - $160,000

Kragthorpe makes 2.2% more than the average salary of $1,189,223.

Kragthorpe ranks 5th out of Big East Schools (but Pitt did not report Wannstedt's outside income, and Syracuse is being a dick about the whole thing).
     Highest reported: Greg Schiano - Rutgets - $2,070,932)
     Lowest reported: Bill Stewart - West Virginia - $878,000)

Kragthorpe makes 11.0% less than the average Big East salary of $1,365,246.

The Big East has the 6th highest average salary out of 12 conferences.

1. SEC  -  $2,637,599
2. Big 12  -  $1,982,504
3. ACC  -  $1,844,198
4. Pac-10  -  $1,791,248
5. Big Ten  -  $1,764,678
6. Big East  -  $1,365,246
7.  MWC  -  $894,535
8. CUSA  -  $807,939
9. WAC  -  $605,675
10. Independent *  -  $503,105 
11. MAC  -  $341,678
12. Sun Belt  -  $281,647

* I know Independent isn't really a conference, and I don't care.

I would love to build a database that corrilates this with the coaches winning percentage. Then use that to calculate a "Return of Investment" factor to see where we rank there, but I have a real job and they might fire me if I don't get back to doing it.  One last thing, though...

If we hired Jon Gruden for the rumored $3.5 mil, he would rank tops in the Big East, 7th overall, and higher than nine of the SEC schools.  I'm just saying.