Alabama football’s coaching change got expensive for the Crimson Tide. UA reported $47.4 million in coach pay spending to the NCAA for the Fiscal Year 2024, leading the SEC in the category by around $23 million.

UA athletics lost over $28 million in FY 2024, which ran from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024. Jessica Schingle, an open records and project specialist at the university, explained the jump as related to the Tide’s move from the retired Nick Saban to Kalen DeBoer.

“The net loss reported for the year was largely due to one-time expenses associated with the football coaching transition,” Schingle said in a January email, accompanying Alabama’s NCAA revenues and expenses report.

AL.com obtained the NCAA financial reports for each of the league’s 15 public schools through a series of open records requests. Vanderbilt was not included, as it is private, and not subject to open records laws.

Georgia came in second in the league, well behind the Crimson Tide at $23.7 million in coach pay spending. Texas, at $21.7 million, and LSU ($21 million) were the only other schools to report more than $20 million in the category.

Auburn ranked third to last in the SEC for FY 2024 coach pay. The Tigers reported spending $14.3 million.

The $47.4 million was a massive increase from the $21.3 million Alabama spent on coaching salaries and bonuses in FY 2023. The Crimson Tide was second in the category for that fiscal year, behind Georgia, which came in at $22.9 million.

The UA spending boom is unlikely to show up again when schools release their reports for FY 2025. The fiscal year included both the entire 2023 season under Saban, and the offseason in which DeBoer was hired and had to build a staff mostly from scratch, so the number was bound to show up extremely high in FY 2024.

Auburn’s spending was similar to the previous fiscal year, when it reported $14.3 million as well. However, as other schools upped their spending, they passed the Tigers on the list and AU fell from 10th in the FY 2023 rankings.

Auburn ranked ahead of only Arkansas and Mississippi State during FY 2024. Florida, Missouri and South Carolina all moved past the Tigers from year to year.

Mississippi State ranked dead last in coach pay spending for the fiscal year. At $10.7 million, the Bulldogs were the only program to report less than $11 million the category, with 14th-place Arkansas at $13.2 million.