The Best Bargains in College Football

Winning in college football is one thing, but who's winning without breaking the bank on their coach's salary? Darren Everson of the Wall Street Journal compiled some interesting data on this question. Everson ranks the BCS teams that received votes in last season's final AP poll in order of how big a bargain their coaches were, based on an average of a coach's salary and the "cost per vote" (coach salary divided by the number of AP votes each team received). It should be noted that there are schools with very highly paid coaches that did not receive votes in the final AP poll, including Iowa and Notre Dame (both coaches with salaries in excess of $3M), and thus did not even make the list.