In the world of Big 12 conference football, multi-million dollar coaching contracts are widespread.

Coaches’ contracts are loaded with money from endorsements, radio and television shows, personal appearances, bonuses for victories, incentives for reaching attendance goals, as well as other perks including cars, country club memberships and even the use of private jets.

What these high-dollar salaries do to universities and student-athletes is interpreted differently by different individuals, but one thing is certain: These salaries are a part of competing in the booming business of high-stakes college football. In the fierce battle for victories in college football coaching is key, making good coaching even more valuable.

While the conference’s coaches are all highly compensated, Kansas coach Mark Mangino’s annual guaranteed salary ranks dead last in the league.

And while Mangino is in no danger of living on the street, his salary of more than $600,000 a year is more than seven times that of the average University of Kansas faculty member, he still makes less than half of the average Big 12 football coach.

Cost of doing business

Kansas Athletics Director Lew Perkins said he was well aware of Mangino’s low ranking in relation to his fellow Big 12 coaches.

“Does it concern me? Absolutely.” Perkins said.

In a conference where the average football coach’s guaranteed salary is approaching $1.5 million a season, Mangino appears to be getting left behind.

Maybe not for long.

Perkins said he and Mangino were currently discussing a raise and extension on the coach’s contract. He said the negotiations had been ongoing for some time, but that nothing had yet been finalized.

“These things take time,” Perkins said.

Mangino signed a five-year contract when former Athletics Director Al Bohl brought him to Lawrence in 2001. He has been given two one-year extensions, keeping him under contract through the 2008 season.

Mangino, through a spokesman, declined to comment for this article.

Through open records requests, The University Daily Kansan obtained the contracts of 10 Big 12 football coaches, including Mangino. Only Colorado and Baylor did not comply with requests for their coaches’ contracts.

Dan Hawkins’ contract with Colorado remains unsigned and therefore not subject to records request, while Baylor is not legally required to provide Guy Morriss’ contract, because it is a private university. His salary was obtained from filings with the Internal Revenue Service.

Mangino is one of five Big 12 coaches whose annual guaranteed salary is less than $1 million. The other four are Hawkins, Missouri’s Gary Pinkel, Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy and Ron Prince at Kansas State.

The Colorado athletics department described the contract and its value for The Kansan, indicating that the salary would be greater than Mangino’s.

The conference’s average, however, is slightly skewed because of the annually increasing guaranteed salaries of its two highest-paid coaches, Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops and Texas’ Mack Brown. Both Brown and Stoops are scheduled to make at least $2.5 million in 2006 and their contracts require that their salaries increase by at least $100,000 per year.

Perkins said he couldn’t deny that football coaches make a lot of money, but he said it was part of being a member of a large, competitive conference.

“If you’re going to play in that league, you’re going to pay what the fair market value is,” Perkins said. “It’s just the cost of doing business.”

The Perks of Coaching Collegiate Football

According to his contract, Mangino is paid a base salary of $128,438, similar to the Kansas men’s and women’s basketball coaches. He is also guaranteed $475,000 from “radio shows and Internet features pursuant to KUAC arrangements, affiliations and/or contracts featuring Mangino.” In total, his annual yearly guaranteed salary adds up to $603,438, plus other forms of guaranteed compensation.

Mangino is guaranteed the use of two cars classified as “the highest line of the manufacturer” — recently, at least one has been a Lincoln Navigator — and memberships to Alvamar and Lawrence country clubs. He is also guaranteed the use of a suite at Memorial Stadium, travel for his wife, Mary Jane, and up to four guests to away games as well as four tickets to men’s basketball games at Allen Fieldhouse.

Including the guaranteed salary and additional perks, Mangino’s compensation in 2005 totaled $769,256, according to Athletics Department filings with the IRS.

Despite missing out on money guaranteed to other coaches, Mangino can make a significant amount in incentives. For example, beating Nebraska and Kansas State in the past two seasons, earned Mangino $5,000 per victory. He also receives a $5,000 to 10,000 bonus for each televised victory and a $1,000 bonus for each player who graduates.

Unlike other conference coaches, Mangino’s contract does not include a buy-out clause. Perkins said Mangino should be allowed to leave Kansas without penalty if he chooses.

“We don’t want to keep anyone here that doesn’t want to be here,” Perkins said.

Mangino’s salary is relatively low when compared to his fellow coaches, in large part because his contract lacks many of the other guaranteed forms of compensation.

Bohl, the former athletics director who negotiated the terms of Mangino’s current contract, declined to comment on how Mangino’s salary was set.

Other Big 12 coaches’ contracts, like Mangino’s, guarantee certain perks, including the use of courtesy cars, tickets to football games and travel to away games for guests. A few coaches receive more lavish perks. Brown is allowed the use of a $60,000 personal expense account, while Stoops receives up to 35 hours of private airplane use.

Commercialization and its Effects

These high salaries and lavish perks open the coaches and programs to criticism. It’s not the salaries themselves that are questioned, but rather the sources of the money.

William Friday, co-founder of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics and president emeritus of the University of North Carolina, says television networks and apparel companies run collegiate athletics. With the influx of money from these companies, athletics programs are able to fund multi-million dollar salaries.

“I believe that college sports are over commercialized,” Friday said. “This has caused the inflation of coaches’ salaries.”

The Knight Commission was formed in 1989 to combat what it calls the commercialization of college athletics.

Under Perkins’ leadership, Kansas Athletics Inc. has secured highly lucrative contracts with Adidas and ESPN to help supplement the department budget and, in turn, coaches’ salaries. In 2005, Kansas signed an exclusive apparel contract with Adidas that paid $26.67 million over eight years. Also in 2005, the department signed a seven year, $40.2 million contract extension with ESPN Regional Television.

More than half of the conference’s coaches make at least $100,000 for wearing apparel provided by sports apparel companies. Brown at Texas makes $580,000 a year for wearing Nike clothing whenever representing that football program.

Mangino’s contract requires him to wear the official apparel of the Athletics Department, which was Nike when the contract was authored but has since changed to Adidas.

Three coaches, Brown, Stoops and Iowa State’s Dan McCarney. are compensated as much as $600,000 for making speeches and appearances for boosters, alumni and community groups.

Friday asserts that large contracts signed with TV stations and apparel companies have helped turn college athletics into a commercial industry.

Victories are Key

The common thread uniting college football coaches and programs and high-paying contracts is on-field results. Simply put, victories and bowl appearances go a long way toward landing a mega contract.

Mangino’s record in five seasons at Kansas is well below .500, 19-29, but victories that snapped long losing streaks to Kansas State and Nebraska and a victory at the Fort Worth Bowl last season have given Jayhawk faithful a reason to be hopeful for the future.

At Kansas football media day last week, Mangino said he felt the program had laid a strong foundation.

“I’ll be very honest with you, we’re no longer sponsoring a football team here at KU, we have a football program,” Mangino said. “We have all the elements in place to be successful.”

In February, Perkins and Mangino announced that funding had been secured to build a football office complex and practice fields at Memorial Stadium. Included in the project are coaches’ offices, weight room, academic support offices and a team locker room.

The project is considered to be a significant step in the growth of ‘a program,’ because Kansas has been one of the few Big 12 schools with football operations not run at the football stadium. Currently, football operations are run out of offices near Allen Fieldhouse. Completion of the new facility is expected for the 2008 season.

Perkins said the addition of the $31 million dollar Anderson Family Football Complex was an important step for the football program.

“It was huge,” Perkins said. “Everybody said it couldn’t be done and we went out and did that, which showed me that there were people out there who really care about football and want it to be very important here.”

Also under Mangino’s leadership, season ticket sales have soared to the highest levels in recent memory. In the past four seasons, sales have increased 20 percent, by 4,000 tickets. Season ticket sales in 2005 topped 26,000, meaning nearly half of Memorial Stadium’s 50,000 seats were already sold.

In three of Mangino’s first four seasons the football program made at least $1.9 million. While it’s not a substantial profit compared to other conference schools, the numbers have grown dramatically since the 2003 season. Football profit jumped nearly $800,000 following the team’s trip to the 2003 Tangerine Bowl. In the 2004 season, the program recorded the highest profit of the Mangino era, recording nearly $2.8 million.

The Kansas program’s profit pales in comparison to the football program at Texas. Brown has led his team to five years of success that has helped drive the program to a profit of nearly $39 million in 2004, according to the budgets the Athletics Department provided to The Kansan. That total is a jump from the $16.2 million the program made in 2001.

In a conference where some coaches’ salaries rival those of CEO’s of major corporations, college football is a thriving industry. From the millions of dollars universities pay their highly compensated coaches, it’s clear the demand for good coaching is steady.

In his fifth season, Mangino leads a program trying to qualify for back-to-back bowl games for the first time in its history.

With expectations and pressure at a fever pitch, Mangino claims he has Kansas on track to be more than just a basketball school. Competing for football championships in one of the nation’s toughest conferences isn’t cheap, though.

As Perkins and Mangino work on a deal to keep the coach in Lawrence past the 2008 season, Perkins says he knows the cost of competing in football isn’t cheap, and he admits it’s part of trying to be the best.

“It’s a lot of money,” Perkins said. “I’m not going to sit here and deny it, but that’s what the fair market value is.”

Mangino has staked out a list of goals that could provide him with the leverage he needs to get a contract that boots his salary higher and more in line with what that fair market value seems to be.

Kansan senior sportswriter Ryan Schneider can be contacted at rschneider@kansan.com.