Cal Football: Coaches' Salary Report -- Justin Wilcox 7th in Pac-12

USA TODAY's database on college football coaches' salaries has some interesting findings, such as which coaches accepted voluntary pay cuts
Cal Football: Coaches' Salary Report -- Justin Wilcox 7th in Pac-12
Cal Football: Coaches' Salary Report -- Justin Wilcox 7th in Pac-12 /

A quick list of the notable things we learned from USA TODAY's recently released database on college football coaches' 2020 salaries:

---Cal's Justin Wilcox is the seventh-highest paid coach in the Pac-12 this season with a total pay of $3,276,248.

---Wilcox accepted a voluntary pay cut of $228,756 this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

---Of the 10 coaches at public universities in the Pac-12, only UCLA's Chip Kelly and Arizona State's Herman Edwards did not take voluntary pay cuts.

---The lowest paid of the FBS coaches USA Today obtained records for is Coastal Carolina's Jamey Chadwell, at $375,000. He took a pay cut of $56,034.

---Alabama's Nick Saban, the highest-paid coach at $9.3 million, took no pay cut. Neither did LSU's Ed Oregon, whose total pay is nearly $9 million.

---The biggest pay cut was taken by Clemson's Dabo Swinney, who reduced his take by $1,250,000, which is more than 41 FBS coaches will make this season. 

---Only one Pac-12 coach will get paid less this season than Oregon's Mario Cristobal, whose team won the Pac-12 title last year and is favored to win it again this season. Only Oregon State's Jonathan Smith is scheduled to make less this season than Crisobal's $2.5 million. Washington's Jimmy Lake, who has never been a head coach any level, will make more than Cristobal. (Of course, a lot of us would like to be underpaid like Cristobal.)

---No Pac-12 coach' is among the top 17 highest-paid coaches in the nation this year, and the conference's highest-paid coach last year (Chris Petersen of Washington) is no longer coaching. 

---Four coaches will earn more than $8 million -- Alabama's Nick Saban, LSU's Ed Oregeron, Clemson's Dabo Swinney, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh -- while the highest-paid Pac-12 coach is Stanford's David Shaw, at a little more than $4.6 million. The descrepancy is even greater if you consider that the cost of living in the Bay Area and several Pac-12 venues is considerably higher than it is in places such as Tuscaloosa, Alabama, or Clemson, South Carolina, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

---Part I: Eight Southeastern Conference coaches will earn more this season than any Pac-12 coach.

---Part II: SEC teams have won 10 national championships the past 14 years; the Pac-12 has won none in that span.

---Mel Tucker more than doubled his salary when he left Colorado, which paid him about $2.4 million last season, to coach Michigan State, where he will earn a little more than $5 million this season.

---Mike Leach's salary rose from $3.75 million last year at Washington State to $5 million this year at Mississippi State.

---Even with the voluntary salary reductions, the average total pay for all FBS head coaches was $2.7 million, an increase of 1.1% over last year. If there had been no salary reductions, the average total pay would have been $2.79 million, an increase of 4.5%.

Here is a ranking of Pac-12 coaches' total payout for 2020 (with their national ranking in parentheses), according to the USA TODAY database:

--1. (18) David Shaw, Stanford -- $4,812,917

--2. (20) Kyle Whittingham, Utah -- $4,634,178

--3. (21) Clay Helton, USC -- $4,569, 507

--4. (23) Chip Kelly, UCLA -- $4,300,000

--5. (36) Herman Edwards, Arizona State -- $3,640,00

--6. (43) Kevin Sumlin, Arizona -- $3,283,333

--7. (44) Justin Wilcox, Cal -- $3,276,248

--8. (50) Karl Dorrell, Colorado -- $3,040,000

--9. (52) Jimmy Lake, Washington -- $2,912,500

--10. (55) Nick Rolovich, Washington State -- $2,870,000

--11. (57) Mario Cristobal, Oregon -- $2,542,500

--12. (63) Jonathan Smith, Oregon State -- $2,288,000

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.