Will coach for food.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS biz

There arc lots of reasons to root for the University of Colorado Buffaloes this coming football season. Home-state loyalty. An exciting new conference. That big freaking buffalo that makes every other mascot in the nation look like a simpering suit of fluff.

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But I'm down with the Buffs for another reason. I like CU's style when it comes to paying the top dog.

That would be Jon Embree, the amped-up head coach whose team speeches, according to early lore, are infused with more shouting than any aging booster ever heard from Robert Plant at full roar back in the day. Some enterprising Leeds School of Business student in Boulder ought to start marketing a brand of throat lozenges named Embrees.

The contract approved in March by CU's Board of Regents guarantees Embree $250,000 in salary this year. He'll make more by showing up for media appearances and shilling for sponsors, but the base guarantee is just that: $250,000.

If you're pulling $70k with commissions and trying to pay for a house and a family, it sounds like a pretty sweet gig, I realize. But in the grander scheme of NCAA Division 1 Footballnomics, Embree is working on the cheap.

According to data supplied by CU to the U.S. Department of Education, CU's football program generated roughly $26 million in revenue for the 2009-2010 season, the latest for which data are available. Thus, Embree's base salary translates to about 1 percent of total team revenue.

And how does that compare with Embree's fellow coaches in the Pac-12?

Let's start at the top by taking a look at the coach everybody loves to hate, the University of Southern California's Lane Kiffin. USC, a private school, isn't subject to the Dept. of Education's reporting requirements, and hasn't disclosed Kiffin's compensation. But most published reports estimate Kiffin gets $4 million-plus per year.

The Dept. of Education's Equity in Athletics web-site indicates USC's football program generates $29 million in annual revenue. At $4 million, Kiffin would be pocketing 14 percent of the revenue his team generates. Assuming the contributions of an able tax accountant, Kiffin's net take-home pay for a month would approach what Embree will collect in salary over a year, before taxes.

Then there's the University of Oregon. Chip Kelly, the coach whose dazzling offensive attack brought Oregon to the Rose Bowl in January, will earn $2.4...