San Diego State’s Rocky Long says coaching salaries are ‘embarrassing at times’ after Jimbo Fisher’s $75 million Texas A&M deal

Jimbo Fisher’s new deal with Texas A&M will pay him a guaranteed $75 million over 10 years. There’s never been a richer college coaching contract by total value.

How San Diego State coach Rocky Long feels about that:

Texas A&M’s football program is massively profitable. It netted about $70 million for the university in the 2015-16 school year, most of which subsidized other A&M sports. The school gets $40-ish million annual payouts from the SEC. The Aggies are one of the few athletic departments that probably can afford to pay a coach a $7.5 million.

Long’s pay at San Diego State was about $826,000 this year, according to the coaching pay database at USA Today. That’s not close to Fisher money, but it’s still a lot for a coach whose players aren’t paid. That’s the case for pretty much everyone who’s paid a college coaching salary to lead players who aren’t paid. Also, there’s this:

You already know what Rashaad Penny’s bonus is.

A $10,000 bonus isn’t close to the same thing as a $7.5 million coaching salary. And by college coaching standards, Long’s a bargain. He’s one of the Mountain West’s best coaches and only gets middling pay for that league, where some are over $1.5 million.

But figuring out what a morally acceptable number is in a sport where the players are compensated largely in room and board seems like a hard task to me.