Pete Carroll is Underpaid

Pete Carroll deserves a 14% raise, according to Forbes Magazine. He's already college football's highest paid coach, taking in a reported $4.4 million last year (including $400,000 in benefits and deferred compensation).

Based on their records, Forbes says, the only coaches who are more underpaid for their performance are Jim Tressel (Ohio State), Mike Riley (Oregon State), and Jim Grobe (Wake Forest). The coaches for a pair of USC opponents this season, Charlie Weis (Notre Dame) and Al Groh (Virginia), are among the top five overpaid coaches. That list is led by Kirk Ferentz (Iowa).

In the magazine's list of the 20 most valuable football programs, USC came in 14th, with a value of $53 million and profit of $13 million last year. That makes USC the most valuable program in the Pac-10, with a 7% increase in total value in the last 12 months. Notre Dame topped the list with a value of $101 million and profit of $45.8 million. The Fighting Irish gave $21.1 million of that to the university's academic program.

USC did not make the Forbes list of top 10 "Champion Factories," a slight misnomer but interesting nonetheless. The ranking actually tallied the number of current pro athletes in five major leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS, NHL). Michigan led the way with 68 alumni on current pro rosters, followed by Ohio State with 62. The Trojans were No. 1 on the baseball-only list, with 12 alumni currently in the big leagues.

Click here for the full Business of College Football feature.

In other publishing news, U.S. News & World Report will hand out its popular college rankings in a few days.

Photo by Alex Gallardo / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[gerrrg]

I believe that Forbes list of athletic powerhouses was incorrect, and it appeared they completely screwed up the list of NFL players. They don't have complete data listed, so you can't do a fact check, but just on the face of the list, you can see that something is wrong by just going down the rosters - USC had more players listed on opening day than was identified by Forbes.