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For a second consecutive season, Michigan is the Big Ten Conference football champion — and for a second consecutive season, Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh also will come away with more than $2 million in bonuses.
Michigan’s 43-22 victory Saturday night over Purdue in Indianapolis gave Harbaugh $1.5 million: $1 million for the Big Ten title and $500,000 for advancing the second-ranked Wolverines into the College Football Playoff semifinals. Although the latter won’t become official until Sunday’s playoff selection announcement, it is inconceivable that the Michigan will not join the nation’s other undefeated team, No. 1 Georgia, among the four semifinalists.
According to Harbaugh’s contract, he will not be able to add to his bonuses unless the Wolverines win the national championship, an achievement that would give him another $500,000. He could, however, get $75,000 for winning any one of six national coach of the year awards and up to $150,000 more at athletics director Warde Manuel’s discretion depending on the team’s NCAA Academic Progress Rate scores.
For now, Harbaugh now has a total of $2.05 million in bonuses this season. That is more than at least 52 other Football Bowl Subdivision head coaches are making this season in basic annual pay from their schools, according to USA TODAY Sports’ annual compensation survey.
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Harbaugh came into Saturday night’s game with $500,000 for having won the Big Ten East Division title and a berth in the conference championship game with last Saturday’s victory at Ohio State. On Tuesday, he added on when he was named Big Ten coach of the year in voting by both media representatives and the conference’s coaches; winning the coaches’ award gives him a $50,000 bonus.
Altogether, Harbaugh will end up making more than $10 million for a season in which his basic annual compensation from the school is $8.05 million. He will join Alabama’s Nick Saban, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Georgia’s Kirby Smart and LSU’s Brian Kelly in reaching eight figures. Kelly has gotten there with $575,000 in bonuses — $500,000 the team become eligible for a bowl a $75,000 for the team playing in the Southeastern Conference championship game.
Smart, whose team routed LSU for the SEC title on Saturday picked up $525,000 in bonuses for that accomplishment and now has $800,000 so far, second to Harbaugh’s total this season.
Last year, two days after Michigan beat Ohio State to win the Big Ten East, Harbaugh announced that all of the bonus money he would be owed for the football team’s success during the 2021 season would be redirected to members of the department who had taken pandemic-related pay cuts during an 11-month stretch of 2020 and 2021 and had remained on the payroll.
In the end, 210 employees received a combined total of just over $1.5 million, according to information USA TODAY Sports obtained from the university under an open-records request.
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