Football and Financial (in)equality: Comparing Salaries of Men’s and Women Teams' Coaches and Men’s Severance Pay within NCAA Division I-FBS

This study investigates the relationship between women’s and men's team coaches’ salaries and severance pay at 104 public NCAA Division I-FBS institutions. Using data from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Data project from 2014 to 2021, the research reveals that the salaries of men's teams’ coaches grew significantly more than those of women's teams’ coaches, especially among the most competitive schools in FBS (Power conferences). At Power conference schools, the increase in the severance pay for men’s teams’ coaches was 5.3 times larger than the growth in women’s teams’ coaching salaries. The study confirms that the higher the level of competition, there is a growing disproportion of compensation in favor of men’s teams’ coaches over women’s teams’ coaches. FBS institutions’ chase for prestige means paying coaches of men’s teams increasingly more than they pay to the coaches of women’s teams, despite espoused values of gender equity, the intent of Title IX, and economic conditions.