Salary: $3.2 million Football budget: $21.6 million Team: Clemson Conference: ACC
"Yet none of those coaches can top the buyout of one of the more surprising new members of our list: Clemson's Dabo Swinney. He's the lowest-paid of the ten men here, with a salary of $3.2 million. Yet if Clemson were to fire Swinney next year, the school would reportedly owe him close to $21 million, which is just $4 million less than it spent on its entire football program last year. And the $22 million of that spending not going into Swinney's pocket makes up nearly 30% of Clemson's total athletic expenses, the fourth-highest mark for coaches on our list."