Pay and Performance: An Examination of Texas High School Football Coaches

Submitted by: Scott J. Callan and Janet M. Thomas - Bentley College Abstract Salaries paid to high school coaches and team managers have recently generated media and public debate over their justifiability. This research represents an earnings function estimation designed to identify salary determinants for high school football coaches. The theoretical model supporting the analysis builds on models presented in the sports economics literature. To conduct the empirical estimation, we used salary, human capital, performance, and institutional data for coaches of Class 4A and Class 5A 11-man high school football programs in Texas (N = 95). Our results indicate that the determination of overall coaching compensation is significantly affected by human capital investment, measured through experience; by job performance, captured in winning percentage; and by school characteristics, such as location and stadium size.