Even at $4.2M a Year, Oklahoma State is Getting a Great Deal With Mike Gundy

This summer when Mike Gundy signed his new seemingly lifelong contract, it seemed like both sides were getting a pretty great deal. Gundy was getting the security he presumably always wanted, and Oklahoma State was locking up one of the best coaches in the country at a very fair price.

So I thought it would be interesting to look at where Oklahoma State ranked nationally in how much it was paying per win to its coach after the annual coaching salary data was released on Wednesday.

I ranked the 20 highest paid coaches by how much their school is paying them per win. I looked at how many wins they average at their current school and divided their current salary by that number.

Here they are.

Note: I didn’t include Tom Herman because it felt unfair to extrapolate 7/12 of a season into a full year for him. Also, when doing the math I counted 2017 as a half year.

What you’re going for as a school is a big number in the wins per year and as far down on the list as possible in the rankings of money paid per win. Basically, Washington is killing the game right now.

But so is Oklahoma State which pays Mike Gundy about 60 percent per win of what Arkansas pays Bret Bielema. And Oklahoma State wins three more games a year! How we doing over there, Hog fans?

Obviously not all wins are created equal, though, and Alabama will happily pay that premium for those January wins that are worth 10x or 20x what the ones in September are worth.

Other notes:

• Was anyone surprised to see Kevin Sumlin averages more wins per year than Mike Gundy? I realize Gundy started a rebuild, but I would have bet a lot of money he averaged more Ws per year than Sumlin.

• Poor Arizona fans. That’s rough. Somebody said in the comments yesterday that RichRod is the Travis Ford of college football. That’s sad and maybe true.

• Ohio State, quietly, has the best deal in all of college sports going. It pays Urban Meyer almost half of what Nick Saban makes, and gets more wins out of him!

• Florida State and Stanford aren’t far behind that best deal in college sports.

• Iowa, Tennessee and Mississippi State — all paying a lot for a so-so product (at best).

• Isn’t it interesting how much two games a year affects narratives? Gundy averages 1.5 more wins per year than Butch Jones, and those two could not be farther apart in the way they’re perceived. Granted, a lot of that has to do with the fact that Oklahoma State’s trajectory is positive and Tennessee’s is not, but 1.5 wins a year!