An examination of state-level public salaries around the country makes one thing clear: If you’re going to be a college coach, New Hampshire might not be your first choice.

We are one of 11 states, mostly northern ones, where the highest-paid person on the state payroll is neither a football coach nor a basketball coach. 

Like Vermont, Montana, Delaware and Alaska, our list is topped by the head of the state university. That’s James Dean Jr., president of the University of New Hampshire, whose 2022 salary was $484,640 according to the university system. (You can see all their salaries at www.usnh.edu/sites/default/files/hr/resources/compensation/pdf/usnh-salary-book-2022.pdf)

In four other states the public-payroll list is topped by medical school deans or officials, while one list (Maine) is topped by a law school dean and one (Nevada) by a medical school plastic surgeon, which might say something about Nevada’s priorities.

Otherwise, in 26 states it’s a football coach who’s the highest-paid public person, in 12 it’s a basketball coach and in one state it’s a tie between the two.

Those coaches’ salaries are huge: 25 college football coaches made at least $1 million last year and three made at least $10 million, according to press reports, while one college basketball coach was also in the eight-figure category and at least a dozen made $1 million or more.  

Those are huge by normal standards but not by private industry standards. For example, the CEO of Fidelity Investments, one of New Hampshire’s major employers, made $7 million last year in cash and stocks while four other C-suite officers in the firm made at least $3 million, according to online reports.

Bloomberg, a business news site, says more than 30 public-company executives had pay deals that exceeded $100 million in value at the end of fiscal 2021, a dozen of which surpassed $200 million and a couple shot into the billions. It’s hard to know what the heads of private companies make, since they sidestep reporting requirements by not being on the stock market, but coach-level payouts are certainly not unusual for them.

New Hampshire’s best-paid college coach oversees football. Richard Santos makes $275,000, which isn’t small but is lower than the salary for the deans of several other schools in the state university system. The second best-paid coach is UNH men’s hockey coach Michael Souza at $240,000, while numbers three and four coach men’s basketball and soccer there, respectively.

UNH women’s hockey coach Hilary Witt at $133,000 and women’s basketball coach Kelsey Hogan at $117,000 are the only two women’s coaches in the six-figure category,

Then there’s Gov. Sununu, whose official salary is $143,000. You can see all this and more at nh.gov/transparentnh/ , a searchable site from the state government.

New Hampshire sits in the middle of the pack for governor salaries. New York at $225,000 tops the list and Maine at $70,000 is at the bottom.

Incidentally, you may have seen an online report that the state medical examiner is New Hampshire’s highest-paid public official. That was released by a data-scraping company, which apparently doesn’t think public universities are staffed by public employees.

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