Notre Dame Paid Former Coach Charlie Weis More in 2011 Than Current Irish Coach Brian Kelly

With the ever-rising salaries college football coaches are pulling in these days, it isn’t particularly surprising that Notre Dame paid head coach Charlie Weis more than $2 million dollars in 2011.

The only problem is that Weis wasn’t coaching the Fighting Irish in 2011 — Brian Kelly was.

After leading the Irish to the 2006 Fiesta Bowl in his second season in South Bend, Weis was given a massive 10-year contract extension worth between $30-40 million — an absurdly large contract for a college coach at the time.

Weis led Notre Dame back to the BCS the following season with a bid to the Sugar Bowl, but his well of success quickly dried up after that. The Irish went a combined 15-21 over the next three years, prompting the university to cut ties with the former Patriots offensive coordinator in 2009. However, not all ties were severed.

Even after he had taken the head coaching job at Kansas, Weis continued to cash in on his original deal. Notre Dame is stuck paying him an estimated $2,054,744 each year, according to the Chicago Tribune, in a buyout plan that will total nearly $19 million by the time of its completion in 2015.

Kelly, on the other hand, who led Notre Dame to its first national title game since 1993 this past season, was paid roughly $1,088,179 by the school from July 2011 to July 2012.

So, Notre Dame is — and unless Kelly restructures his deal, will continue — paying its former coach about a million dollars per year more than its current one. We doubt Weis is complaining.