Carolina Panthers: Ron Rivera Gets Extended
The Carolina Panthers agreed to an extension with Ron Rivera in the past week and it show more sign of the team’s commitment to continuity outside of Josh Norman.
A few days ago the Carolina Panthers decided to extend head coach Ron Rivera’s contract. The head man known as Riverboat Ron will now make about $6 million a year through the 2018 season. Whether or not that seems like a lot of money to you will depend on what you compare it to.
College coaches used to make less than professional coaches, but that has changed as colleges moved to pay their coaches just as much as the pros in order to keep them from jumping there. Alternatively they raised coaching salaries to deter other schools that might poach their coach.
As a general rule, NFL coaches still make more on average than collegiate coaches. It is a market without a real ceiling. Unlike a player’s salary, there is no cap on the money you can spend on a head coach. The current highest paid coaches happen to be Pete Carroll, Sean Payton, and Bill Belichick. Belichick has the done the most of those three and is paid about half a million less.
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Carroll and Payton are living off taking franchises to their first Super Bowl victories at $8 million a year.
So there is no good measure for what it means that Ron Rivera is now worth six million a year other than that it is an increase over what he was worth before and there was talk of firing him three years ago. The other thing that it means is that other teams are going to be less likely to hire him away.
At the new $6 million figure Rivera would be worth about $353,000 per victory last year. Carroll was worth $545,000 per win by comparison. That still rates as a pretty good bargain.
So good for Coach Rivera and good for the Panthers. Hopefully this keeps a winning formula intact over the next two or three years