Coaches getting paid years after they stopped working for a school is nothing new and is seemingly a fact of life at just about every major program as buyouts are handed out with regularity. Some drawing a pension from being in various university systems is somewhat common as well.
Those amounts typically vary quite a bit but it might be hard to top the paycheck that former Oregon head coach and athletic director Mike Bellotti is drawing from the place he once coached. The New York Times put out a detailed look at the pension issues affecting the state and noted that Bellotti, who is an ESPN analyst nowadays, is the third-highest paid pensioner in the state of Oregon system at roughly $559,000 a year.
“It was basically to augment the university’s ability to pay a competitive salary to its coaching staff,” he told the Times, noting that he never asked for the large pension but it was included in his contracts with the school. “It was pay later as opposed to paying now.”
For those that weren’t math majors, Bellotti is drawing just over an estimated $46,000 a month. To put that in perspective, the yearly total puts him six-figures ahead of what current Ducks assistant coaches Michael Johnson ($335,000) and Keith Heyward ($450,000), among others, are making in 2018.
We all know the buyout life that some coaches (cough, Charlie Weis, cough) are living can be cushy but Bellotti is certainly proving the pension life isn’t too bad either after hanging up the whistle.