They've been out of control for decades, it's just getting more obvious now.

guaranteed money.

I don't think all schools are, but if you have a lengthy track record of failed coaches since your last successful one, if you want to attract a good candidate, I think you need to guarantee the money, or at least a good portion of it.

If your track record isn't nearly so awful, I think you could get away with instead offering a higher upside, rather than a guaranteed floor.

Nebraska's most successful coach of the last 20 years is Bo Pelini, and they fired his ass after a 9 win season, and after never winning fewer than 9 games. Is 9 or 10 wins a successful standard for a program like Nebraska that aspires to true greatness? No. But it means there's a lot more risk involved in taking the job as the standards are high, and the ability to succeed is low. Nebraska hasn't made a bowl in their last six seasons. Getting Nebraska to a place where they regularly win the West seems relatively easy, but moving beyond that would require a true legend at this point.

Just curious what others think. Seems as if $10 million/year is at a level where fans believe the salaries are out of control. So what is reasonable?

Just thinking out loud, it seems to me that a salary south of $1 million/year would be too low. These coaches are often the most visible representatives of the schools they coach, so the salaries should reflect this.

Not sure where I think this should land between those numbers.

become more popular. Most coaches have bonuses in for meeting certain performance measures but they're paltry and insignificant compared to base pay.

For schools that don't have a completely toxic environment, I think I'd spell out some specific conditions that would allow (but not require) firing for-cause, such as:
-Winning below X number of games/conference games
-Losing X number of games/conference games by more than Y points
-Having a finding/punishment that results in the loss of scholarships, bowl eligibility, or vacation of wins.

Then in terms of payment, I'd go with a lower base-pay, and meaningful performance-based pay. I lay out a framework below, specific amounts or conditions could vary (e.g., some teams might value end of season totals, or final CFP ranking ranges, etc...), but you get the basic idea:

Base pay? $500K

Then, I'd offer bonuses for the important things:
-$750K for win over primary rival
-$500K for win over the next two most important games of the season (decided before the season)
-$250K for win over the next five teams (decided before the season)
-$100K for win over any remaining non-buy games
-$1 for win over any buy games
-Win a non-playoff bowl game over a top 10 team: $1M
-Win a non-playoff bowl game over a top 20 team: $500K
-Make the playoff (current 4-team version)? $2M
-Win a playoff game? $3M
-Win a championship? $6M

You would probably want some sort of recruiting & player retention payments to incentivize ongoing roster maintenance even after a coach may have decided he's moving on, so again, these amounts would need to vary somewhat.

These things stack. Win the whole thing, you're looking at $15M. I don't think any school should be concerned about paying $15M for each nat'l championship year. That's probably still a bargain. The real concern is paying $10M for Texas A&M or MSU's season this year.

Some examples of this particular framework would have played out in past seasons:
BK 2016 $1,000,002.
BK 2017 $2.95M
BK 2018 $5.3M
MF 2022 $2.2M + potential bowl game of up to $1M

I understand why schools would love to be able to get coaches to sign contracts that allow them to fire coaches sans buyout for losing games, and that require paying big money only in the best seasons. I am not sure why an in-demand coach would sign such a contract. If A&M had offered Jimbo a deal like that he would have stayed at Florida State.

Remember when Texas faculty all signed a thing outraged that Mack Brown was getting 5 mil a year? What simple times those were.

My answer is an honest "I don't know, but my opinion stinks because I think there should be a minor league where people who come to play sports go play sports, and colleges, where people come to play school". My opinion is not based in reality.

As a comparison for highly visible individuals, Mitch Daniels makes under 500k (admittedly with incentives, but still well under a million) and he's a successful university president.

and it should be based in reality. A big part of why it isn't is the anti-trust exemption that Congress grants the NFL to collude not to hire willing adults.

Because that's the only way they can hope to compete for talent at a place that's become the Big Ten's recruiting waste dump.

Rhule will have earned his money if he can manage to turn around that shit show.