Mike Bellotti hasn't coached a football game in a decade. He still earns more than half a million dollars annually from the state of Oregon.
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Bellotti arrived at Oregon as Rich Brooks' offensive coordinator in 1989. He took over for Brooks in 1995 and led the Ducks for 14 seasons. Shortly after stepping down in December 2008, Bellotti became athletics director, though he only held the position for nine months, resigning in March 2010 to become an ESPN analyst.
He is now being rewarded for 20 years at Oregon with a generous pension, as reported by The New York Times. Mary Williams Walsh investigated the pension issues that are crippling the state and noted that Bellotti earns roughly $559,000 annually, the third-highest pension in the state.
Bellotti says he did not ask for the lucrative pension, which includes his salary and money from licensing and endorsement deals from the athletic department.
“It was basically to augment the university’s ability to pay a competitive salary to its coaching staff,” he said of including licensing and endorsement deals, which began in 1995.
The pension is higher than the annual base salary of 19 active FBS head coaches at public institutions last year, including Ohio's Frank Solich ($522,715) and Nevada's Jay Norvell ($450,000). And as noted NBC Sports, it's also higher than the 2018 salaries for several Oregon assistants, including safeties' coach Keith Hayward ($450,000).
