FanHouse Hal Mumme

Look, I'm not the one saying Charlie Weis is underpaid. It's the fine folks over at Coaches Hot Seat who claim that the best-paid coach in college football isn't making enough. Notre Dame's head coach makes $4.2 million a year, but Coaches Hot Seat says he ought to be paid $5.25 million.

Where do they get off saying this stuff? They didn't just pull that number out of thin air. Coaches Hot Seat figures that a coach should be paid 7.5% of his school's football revenue. Why 7.5%? I don't know, but they claim that the average coach takes in 7.61% of the team's football revenue, so their numbers seem reasonable. Still, take all this with a grain of salt.

Weis is getting shafted by more than a million bucks a year, so is he the most underpaid coach in college football? Nope. Not even close. The school getting the biggest bargain, as measured in sheer dollars, is Georgia. Few can argue with Mark Richt's record as the head Bulldog and, at $2.2 million a year, he probably doesn't remember what ramen noodles taste like. CHS says he ought to be getting just under $5 million. Mack Brown? Underpaid. Jim Tressel? Ditto.

The list of underpaid coaches doesn't stop there.

Here's some useful trivia to amaze your friends with this week: after two weeks of play the NCAA passing leader isn't from Texas Tech. No sir. It's none other than New Mexico State's Chase Holbrook.

Who?

You know, the guy with 153 more yards than Texas Tech's Graham Harrell. Holbrook has completed 69% of his passes so far, throwing for 853 yards and six touchdowns against just one interception. Harrell is second with 718 yards and Tennessee's Erik Ainge is third with 624 yards, another 229 yards behind Holbrook.

How did this happen, you ask? Well look no further than the Aggie coach, Hal Mumme. He's the man who lifted the cobwebs off Kentucky's offense as their coach, recruited Tim Couch and started tossin' the pigskin around a little. And now he's found some success in the WAC, natch.

Holbrook is a 6'-5" sophomore, lured to New Mexico State after playing a few games with Mumme at I-AA Southeast Louisiana. Thanks to a second year running the system, the Aggie offense has taken off with Holbrook behind center after inheriting quarterbacks recruited for the previous option-based offense.

So far, the Aggies are 1-1, having defeated Southeastern Louisiana 30-15 and losing a wild one to New Mexico 34-28. In that game, Holbrook set a school record with 37 completions and threw for 472 yards with four touchdowns.

Holbrook should continue to put up huge numbers with a host of WAC defenses to prey upon. His next two games are against Texas Southern and UTEP.

Now you know.