How Arizona's Rich Rodriguez joined elite company, at least with his salary

Arizona football coach Rich Rodriguez’s compensation for this season puts him at a pay level otherwise occupied by people who have won at least one national championship or led a team to the Super Bowl.

But Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh, Dabo Swinney, Urban Meyer, Jimbo Fisher, their agents — and athletics directors across the country — can exhale.

Rodriguez won't be in their neighborhood for long.

More than half of the $6 million he is scheduled to make during his current contract year comes from one-time pay components added to his deal in 2014, then revised a year later.

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In addition, if Arizona’s season were to crater and the school decided to fire him before March 15, 2018, he would get none of this one-time money that is taking him from somewhere near the 40th-highest paid coach in major-college football to a place among the top five.

If Rodriguez leaves Arizona or gets fired for cause before March 15, he would forfeit all of the one-time pay.

Rodriguez is not the only one at the top of USA TODAY Sports' survey of head coaches' pay whose compensation for his current contract year includes an unusual amount. Saban's $11.1 million includes a $4 million contract signing bonus, and Swinney's $8.5 million includes $2.5 million in forms of one-time pay.  

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In 2014, Rodriguez was coming off his third season at Arizona. The Wildcats had just gone 10-4, won the Pac-12 Conference South Division and played in the Fiesta Bowl. In addition, a university benefactor had made an enormous donation to the University of Arizona Foundation for purposes that specifically included providing financial incentives for Rodriguez, men’s basketball coach Sean Miller and athletics director Greg Byrne in hopes or retaining them for the long term.

In Rodriguez’s case, the aim was keeping him through the end of a new five-year contract that initially was set to run through May 31, 2019, but then extended a year later to go through May 31, 2020.

The retention provision set up a series of payment and vesting dates at which Rodriguez would become entitled to portions of the donation, which was made in units of a publicly traded master limited partnership rather than in cash. The university has declined to provide information identifying the partnership, but the Financial Times has identified it as Western Refining Logistics LP.

Because Rodriguez was Arizona’s coach on the first retention target date — March 15, 2016 — he was owed the proceeds from the sale of 25% of the 175,000 units allocated to keeping him.

The next target date is March 15, 2018. That falls in Rodriguez’s 2017-18 contract year, the one USA TODAY Sports is using for this season’s survey of football coaches’ pay.

If he is Arizona’s coach at that point, he will be owed the proceeds from the sale of another 25% of the units. Based on Friday’s closing price, those 43,750 units are worth nearly $1.1 million.

If either party terminates the contract without cause before March 15 — or if Rodriguez is fired for cause — he would not be entitled to any of this money.

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However, the March 15 date carries extra significance for Rodriguez and for Arizona. The contract states that if Rodriguez is fired without cause after March 15, he will be owed a payment equal to the value of the remaining 50% of the units. At present, that would be about $2.1 million.

Because of the vesting feature, USA TODAY Sports also counts this money as part of Rodriguez’s compensation for this season. The same methodology is applied with other coaches whose contracts include deferred payments that vest annually but do not become payable until a later date unless the coach is fired without cause.   

If Rodriguez remains Arizona’s coach through March 15, 2020, the remaining units would not be sold — and he would not actually be paid those proceeds — until after that date.