Who are college football’s most overpaid, underachieving head coaches?

It’s one thing to be overpaid, but it’s another if that coach is also an underachiever. This happens to be the case for some college football schools.

Now more than ever schools across the country, are turning to data analytics to get a competitive edge on the opponents. Depending on it to make a range of critical decisions that not too long ago had been left to the coaches gut, but was now dictating everything from which prospects get offered a scholarship all the way to deciding whether or not to go for it on fourth down.

Almost every aspect of the game has been affected by this emerging trend, but surprisingly enough it appears as though a number of schools have completely ignored data when deciding on who to hire as head coach.

Take a look at how many of the head coaches the FBS who has been a head coach for at least four years have a career winning percentages below .500.

It’s probably safe to say that data wouldn’t decide to hire a head coach who loses more than he wins — only the gut would have the audacity to make such a decision. Rather than giving the job to a veteran head coach with a track record of success, a shockingly high number of ADs offer seven-figure salaries to head coaches with a career winning percentages below .500.

Now, for the sake of being fair — let’s give the schools the benefit of the doubt and assume that many of the coaches listed above actually bring other types of value to the school.  For example, at some schools, the football team’s graduation rate might be of the utmost importance, even more than winning and as long as the head coach can maintain a high GSR then that’s all the athletic directors need to justify keeping on board.

With this mind, let’s take another look at the list of coaches with a career winning percentage below .500 and see how many of them also have GSR below the FBS average of 79.

Even though most college football fans would probably disagree with holding onto a head coach who has a losing record solely because of his above-average graduation rate, but at the end of the day, this is college football — so its understandable that an above-average GSR could prove to be enough for a head coach to hang on to his job.

If we make exceptions for coaches with an above-average GSR and then the list shrinks from 23 coaches to 13.

The third and final data point we’ll take a look at will be yearly compensation and we’ll breakdown how many of these 13 head coaches are earning a salary that’s higher than the FBS average of $2.4 million.

If there was ever a reason to fire a head coach it’s when he goes below .500 on the field, has below-average graduation rates in the and for some reason still takes home an above-average salary.

Who knows how much longer this can go on before the school’s presidents clean house.  Let’s just hope for the fans and players sake that it’s sooner rather than later and going forward they’ll start putting their trust in the data instead of the gut.