When assessing University employees’ salaries, LSU football coach Les Miles’ annual sum doesn’t particularly stand out because most of it is in the form of supplemental compensation beyond his base salary.
The reality is much different. Miles’ $4.3 million yearly take dwarfs that of any other on campus.
But he only makes $300,000 as a Louisiana State University staffer. So where does the other $4 million come from?
The primary source of Miles’ extraneous income is television money.
In the last decade, the amount of TV money pumped into college athletics has skyrocketed, making college football coaches the breadwinners at most schools, and Miles is no exception.
With his recent $549,000 raise last month, Miles is now one of five college football coaches making more than $4 million.
According to a copy of Miles’ contract, an increase in Miles’ supplemental media compensation accounted for the raise.
Basically, the money LSU takes in from the Southeastern Conference’s 15-year deals with CBS and ESPN that are worth $825 million and $2.25 billion, respectively — along with local deals with Cox Sports Television and Guaranty Broadcasting — drives this portion of the contract.
A simple interpretation of that has Miles making the majority of his salary from doing post-game interviews and participating in his weekly radio show. In reality, it’s a reward for making and maintaining LSU as one of the premier football brands in college sports.
“It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come from the shock about paying [former LSU coach Nick] Saban $1 million when we hired him [in 2000] to where it is now with coaches,” Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations and Senior Associate Athletics Director Herb Vincent said last month. “To stay at an elite level, you have to spend money on your coaches, especially if it’s not money directly from the University budget.”
A small portion of that money is from required public-speaking appearances to promote the program.
He also receives an additional $550,000 in supplemental Tiger Athletic Foundation and equipment compensation.
That allotment comes from TAF donations and the LSU Athletic Department’s deal with Nike, which amounts to a potential $11.9 million over seven years.
This portion of Miles’ contract is also external of the University system, making it a more malleable part of his deal, which runs through 2019.
His compensation doesn’t necessarily end there. The coach receives a $19,200 annual automobile stipend for his car.
His new contract, approved Feb. 1 by the Board of Supervisors, established a “length-of-service” incentive that puts $150,000 per year into an LSU-controlled fund. Miles can only collect that money (totaling $750,000) if he stays at LSU until at least 2017.
The incentives don’t end there. Miles can earn up to $500,000 per year for postseason berths and championships. Academic incentives for his players graduating and maintaining a quality GPA average also max out at $200,000.
So Miles’ $300,000 University pay doesn’t tell the full story. Even his base $4.3 million pay doesn’t account for the near $1 million extra Miles could earn each season.
None of this touches on Miles’ personal endorsement deals with the likes of Raising Cane’s. Few University employees could count on such lucrative side jobs.

The salary information taken from the salaries of non-classified employees document kept at the LSU Hill Memorial Library reserves desk.
The document was scanned, processed through optical character recognition, and hand-cleaned. Address information was macro-retrieved from the LSU online directory. Not all names yielded address information.
Some address information is incorrect, as some names, when searched, yield the wrong top result. When viewing maps, bear in mind that some employees are missing from the view because we have no address information for them.
The map of LSU was provided by the LSU Disaster Science and Management Program and the Department of Geography and Anthropology.
Scroll to the bottom of the article for the full-size visualization.
The figures were taken from the latest documents of the operating budget as of July 1, 2012. Click here to interact with the newest salary database. The documents were provided by the Hill Memorial Library reserve desk. The figures will show some faculty and administrative members who have left LSU since that date.