After engineering some of the most potent offenses in recent college football history, Zach Kittley is getting his first head coach opportunity with the Florida Atlantic Owls. The program is in need of transformation, and the Owls clearly think Kittley is the man to do it, but how much will it cost them to succeed?
Kittley’s salary, contract, and net worth indicates the price it costs to bring glory to a program that hasn’t tasted much of late.
Zach Kittley’s Salary and Contract in 2025
Kittley was announced as the new Florida Atlantic head coach on Dec. 2, 2024. He signed a five-year contract that will keep him in place through the 2029 college football season. The new Owls head coach will earn $1 million in the first year of the contract but will earn substantially more by the end of the deal.
Kittley’s salary will increase every year under the terms of the contract. He’ll receive an extra $100,000 each year he remains in Boca Raton, earning the following amounts broken down by year:
- 2025: $1 million
- 2026: $1.1 million
- 2027: $1.2 million
- 2028: $1.3 million
- 2029: $1.4 million
In total, Kittley’s salary over the course of the five-year contract will be $6 million. His 2025 salary is $150,000 more than he earned in his final season as the Texas Tech Red Raiders offensive coordinator and substantially more than the $200,000 salary he commanded in his final season in the same role with the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers in 2021.
Kittley has established himself as one of the top offensive minds in the country, proving attractive to a Florida Atlantic team that hasn’t penetrated the top 50 nationally for scoring offense since Lane Kiffin left after the 2019 season. Kittley’s Houston Baptist, Western Kentucky, and Texas Tech offenses have benefited from his Air Raid concepts, with Bailey Zappe setting FBS records.
“He is a man of high integrity and character, with an incredible reputation in the profession for player development,” Florida Atlantic athletic director Brian White said upon hiring Kittley to the role of Owls head coach.
“Zach is one of the most innovative offensive minds in the game, and I am confident in his ability to build a championship program with an exciting brand of football that can be a source of pride for our fans, our alumni, and the FAU community.”
Other than length and base salary, no other details of Kittley’s contract and salary have been made publicly available at the time of writing.
Kittley’s Net Worth
Under the terms of his five-year deal as head coach at Florida Atlantic, Kittley has a net worth of $6 million. This amount is based on his annually-increasing salary. However, it doesn’t include any salaries accrued during his time at Texas Tech or Western Kentucky.
It also doesn’t include any supplemental pay or athletic and academic performance incentives that are common to head coach contracts. Details of these were not released at the time of Kittley’s hiring. However, the following bonuses were applied to previous head coach Tom Herman’s contract:
- Conference Championship Game appearance: $20,000
- Conference Championship Game win: $40,000
- Bowl game appearance: $30,000
- New Year’s Six Bowl game appearance: $100,000
- College Football Playoff appearance: $100,000
- National Championship Game appearance: $250,000
- National Championship Game win: $500,000
- Top 25 finish: $50,000
- Top 10 finish: $100,000
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Those should serve as a good indicator of the potential additional value Kittley can add to his net worth as the Owls’ head coach.
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