The Des Moines Register has a little blurb about head football coach salaries in the Big 10, particularly that of Hawkeye head coach Kirk Ferentz:
Ferentz is Iowa's coach and that state's highest-paid public employee with a guaranteed annual salary of $2.84 million.
Of the 9 coaches whose salaries were reported in that report, Ferentz's is the highest of the group (Pennsylvania law does not require Penn State to report Joe Paterno's salary).
The fact that Ferentz is the highest paid public employee is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure we can debate how much of that $2.84 million would have gone to players in some form were they able to receive pay commensurate with their marginal revenue product. But the salaries reflect outcomes from competition for a scarce resource that is very valuable to people at the margin. Some argue that the high salaries are a signal that peoples' priorities are misdirected, but certainly the diamond-water paradox applies.
In any case, what's refreshing is that, unlike MLB owners in the past, there's no claims that the Hawkeyes are going to have to raise ticket prices to be able to afford Ferentz's salary.