In Silicon Valley, EAs make six figures. In the SEC, it's $21 an hour

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In this week’s newsletter, we are looking into:

• Just how little EAs for head coaches are paid

  The salaries of executive assistants who make programs run smoothly aren’t great compared to the private sector.

• Tidbits from calendars of coaches who lost in Week One

  What on Brent Pry, Steve Sarkisian, and Dabo Swinney’s day planners portended doom?

• The secrets to an unreal homemade chimichanga

  Yes, we’re deep-frying burritos.

Look at that thing. You can learn to make it… if you are a paid subscriber.

Head coach EAs are horrifically underpaid

When Silicon Valley’s imperious CEOs need an unflappable, indefatigable person to manage their myriad demands and whims, they turn to Maven Recruiting. 

A recent listing by the firm is for a San Francisco-based AI startup hiring an executive assistant who “can anticipate needs before they’re spoken, keep a demanding schedule in perfect order, and bring calm to the chaos.”

The firm needs the person to coordinate complex travel arrangements, handle confidential matters with discretion, and proactively solve problems.

The company, like every Bay Area business, is probably hoping for unicorn status, a fabled billion-dollar valuation.  

A recent estimate of major college football programs found 16 teams that were likely worth that much or more.

These teams are all helmed by figures with stark similarities to big tech’s mythical founders, driven visionaries who force their will upon the world and thrive where others failed. 

They’re also, like tech executives, arrogant, overbearing, exacting, prone to fits of rage, and lavishly compensated. 

But the similarities at the top don’t mesh with the realities at the bottom. 

For its open EA role, the AI startup offers $180,000 a year. 

An EA at an SEC program with a famous coach pulls in just $21 an hour. 

To investigate what these women (and they are all women) make to cater to the needs of the best-compensated coaches in the sport, FOIAball obtained job descriptions and salary data for office administrators, executive assistants, and administrative associates across the sport. 

Presented with the data, Maven Recruiting founder and CEO Jessica Vann was startled, saying in 20 years of staffing EAs, she’s never seen numbers so low. 

“There is a case to be made for these people being really underpaid. Even in early-stage startups, some that are pre-revenue, there are EAs making low six-figures,“ Vann said. 

No one in college football is. 

A quick note before we proceed: We don’t cite specific individuals or teams here. Though the information is a public record, we do not want to plaster names and paychecks across the internet.

But we do want to make a difference. If you're curious if your school is severely underpaying its EA, it is. Reach out to [email protected] and we'll provide the data. We’ll even help you draft a complaint. 

A description for a head coach’s assistant at an SEC program runs two full pages.

She’s tasked with a multitude of jobs: administrative support, office maintenance, coach communications, and, if that weren’t enough, crisis management.

She controls everything her head coach sees and hears, responsible for all information “coming in and going out of the Men’s Football Office.”

She runs his inbox, in charge of all of his “emails and electronic correspondence.” 

The EA is expected to keep him from being pulled in a million directions, coordinating “speaking engagements, endorsement appearances, [and] community relations.”

Then there’s the B.S. She’s the point person for “disgruntled fans” wanting tickets or lodging complaints, appeasing the haters of a coach who’s been known to gruntle a supporter or two. 

If that wasn’t enough, a nebulous catch-all at the end includes all “other duties as assigned by Head Coach.”

What does one take home for all that work?

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