By Mark Pszonak
All head coaches have incentives in their contract that give them an opportunity to make some extra cash. According to Jason Wolf and Steve Berkowitz of the Arizona Republic, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham earned A LOT of extra cash after the 2024 season.
“Dillingham will collect at least $3.056 million in on-field and academic performance-related bonuses for the 2024-25 school year, which surpasses the $3 million that Michigan paid John Harbaugh for winning the national championship in 2023-24, according to a database of public college coaches’ contracts maintained by USA TODAY Sports. The Arizona Republic is part of the USA TODAY Network.”
“Dillingham received $2.604 million in football-related bonuses after the Sun Devils finished the season with an 11-3 record, won the Big 12 Conference and earned the No. 4 seed in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff, where they lost a quarterfinal game against Texas in overtime. ASU finished No. 7 in the final AP Top 25 poll.”
This is on top of the $3.95M that Coach Dillingham earned last year as a base salary, which puts his total at over $7M. Amazingly, this total still isn’t even in the ballpark of the highest base salaries that the top head coaches are currently receiving, with Kirby Smart earning $13.28M and Ryan Day earning $12.5M in 2025.
© Tim Heitman-Imagn Images
However, another way to look at this is that Coach Dillingham’s $3.056M in bonuses is more than the base salary that several FBS head coaches earned in 2024, including Brent Key (Georgia Tech), Rhett Lashlee (SMU), Ryan Silverfield (Memphis) and Spencer Danielson (Boise State).
More Sports News
Considering the success and attention that Coach Dillingham brought to Arizona State last season, he earned every penny of the $7M. And that was proven when the Sun Devils gave him an extension in January which saw his base salary increase to $5.8M. At only 35 years, the future is very bright and prosperous for Coach Dillingham.
