Well this is interesting:
It's all about supply and demand. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
Here's a list from Forbes of the top 25 revenues and expenses in just college football by University.
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It seems the best job you can get at a University is that of a football coach. Not only do you massively outperform the tenured professors, but you also outperform the deans and the university president.
How can this be? Is this fair? Is it fair for a football coach to get a higher salary than highly-respected academics and even their own bosses? Yes, it is.
It's all about supply and demand. Fairness has nothing to do with it.
There is a lack of supply of high quality coaches (and high quality players in general, in any sport). If one wants a good result which is usually accompanied by a large amount of money flowing in to the winning team (e.g. in terms of sponsorship deals) then one needs to pay the price for such quality. In college sports the players are cheap - they're students after all so they get scholarships, but that's why a coach must be expensive.
A football coach with a good performing team brings in a lot of revenue to the University. I was actually surprised to see how much (see the link) - there's a lot of money moving around in college sports. It's a business. Sporting facilities are top quality (better than most professional clubs in Europe for example), every game is packed with fans, while tickets are not cheep. The salary that get's paid to the coach is actually only a minor expense the Universities give out to sports.
| Total Football Expenses | Total Football Revenue | |
| Alabama | $36,918,963 | $81,993,762 |
| Ohio State | $34,026,871 | $58,112,270 |
| Oregon | $20,240,213 | $51,921,731 |
| Stanford | $18,738,731 | $25,564,646 |
| Georgia | $22,710,140 | $74,989,418 |
| Texas A&M | $17,929,882 | $44,420,762 |
| South Carolina | $22,063,216 | $48,065,096 |
| Clemson | $23,652,472 | $39,207,780 |
| Louisville | $18,769,539 | $23,756,955 |
| Florida | $23,045,846 | $74,117,435 |
| Notre Dame | $25,757,968 | $68,986,659 |
| Florida State | $22,052,228 | $34,484,786 |
| LSU | $24,049,282 | $68,804,309 |
| Oklahoma State | $26,238,172 | $41,138,312 |
| Texas | $25,896,203 | $103,813,684 |
| Oklahoma | $24,097,643 | $59,630,425 |
| Michigan | $23,640,337 | $85,209,247 |
| Nebraska | $18,649,947 | $55,063,437 |
| Boise State | $8,537,612 | $15,345,308 |
| TCU | $25,984,011 | $25,984,011 |
| UCLA | $19,193,346 | $25,168,004 |
| Northwestern | $20,148,403 | $27,547,684 |
| Wisconsin | $24,231,297 | $48,416,449 |
| USC | $23,123,733 | $34,410,822 |
| Oregon State | $11,903,213 | $20,666,946 |
For each University listed, money invested in college football pays back substantially. Texas for example gets a fourfold return for every dollar spent on college football. That's a good investment. And this is how one justifies such large salaries of football coaches, which are however still lower compared to professional football salaries in the US. But that's a different story.