Sitting on top: Ferentz again makes top Iowa government salary

Kirk Ferentz, the coach leading the University of Iowa football team in Friday's Rose Bowl, once again also leads another squad of notable Iowans: the state's highest-paid government workers.

His pay for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015, is almost $4 million, according to a new database released by the state.

His perch atop the top-salaries list has made his pay a perennial topic of conversation in Iowa. But the Hawkeyes' 12-1 record and their first Rose Bowl appearance in 25 years offer his fans their best argument yet that he's worth every dollar.

"This year, Ferentz's $339,583 per win looks like a bargain after a 12-1 regular season," according to a CBSSports.com report that calculated price per win and called his contract one of the year's "best bargains" in major college football.

That followed a year when the Hawkeyes won just seven games and Ferentz's $582,143 per win "looked bad," the report said.

In fact, early in 2015, ESPN had named Ferentz the most overpaid coach in college football.

The state salary database for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015, includes 60,138 employees who were paid a total of almost $3.206 billion. That's an increase of about half a percent in the number of employees in the database, up 281 from last year, and about a 2 percent increase in total payroll.

Ferentz's salary increased about 3 percent from the previous year.

“You can make the case that you are paying for something more than a coach,” said Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson.

For example, a study released in September by UI and the Iowa City/Coralville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau said the economic impact of the school’s seven-game home football schedule is more than $110 million.

“But what you can’t do is have a counterfactual of what it would be worth if we didn’t pay our coaches that much,” Swenson said.

DATABASE: Review all state of Iowa employee salaries

He concluded: “There’s no comparison one can make other than the assumption that by having winning teams, that that indirectly justifies the extremely high pay.”

According to the USA TODAY coach salary database of base pay, bonuses and other income, Ferentz earned about $4.1 million going into the 2015 season. That ranked him 14th among the highest-paid coaches in college football. Alabama's Nick Saban was paid the most, at about $7.1 million.

UI officials are quick to note that coaches' salaries are paid through the school’s $86 million athletic department budget, which is not supported with state tax money.

Ferentz and his wife, Mary, are also frequent philanthropists. They’ve given $400,000 to the university’s children’s hospital and $100,000 to the university’s liberal arts college and have pledged $500,000 to the Iowa Football Legacy Campaign, which includes a new indoor practice facility that was completed in 2012 and a performance center completed this year.

“I think the majority of the general public understands there is a cost of doing business at this level,” said Steve Roe, director of UI’s athletic communications.

Football and basketball coaches typically top Iowa's state salary list, and this year, they occupy the top three spots. In second place: Fred Hoiberg, Iowa State University's highly regarded head men's basketball coach, who departed in June for the NBA to coach the Chicago Bulls. He made $2.1 million. Third is Paul Rhoads, ISU’s head football coach, who made $1.85 million. He was fired in November after compiling a 32-54 overall record.

One woman cracked Iowa’s top 10: Lisa Bluder, UI’s head women’s basketball coach, listed at almost $800,000.

Women workers in Iowa state government, on average, made $10,306 less than their male peers in the 2015 fiscal year, according to the new state database. The department with the largest disparity was the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy, where the office’s three men made, on average, almost $63,000 more than two women listed in the database.

Steve Lukan, a former legislator and now director of the office, noted that the disparity is due partly to employee job transitions among the agency’s four-person staff. One woman staff member retired, and her pay in the database was listed at less than $8,200 due to the timing of her departure, he noted.

“Obviously, pay can be a tricky issue,” Lukan said. “It kind of falls to the contract and how the position was reclassified. We’re all trying to do our part to make government more efficient.”