See Pete Carroll? Mamma, let your kids grow up to be coaches

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Coaching football isn’t brain surgery. Then again, it’s not dermatology, either.

Pete Carroll was USC’s highest-paid employee for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007, with a $3.9-million annual salary, according to the university’s most recent IRS filing.

That was good enough to beat out Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski ($2.2 million in annual salary) in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual survey of compensation trends at nonprofit institutions.

But the Trojans’ head coach couldn’t catch four-year survey leader David N. Silvers, a clinical professor of dermatology at Columbia University, who earned $4.3 million. (The survey doesn’t include potentially lucrative endorsement contracts and other sources of income enjoyed by big-time college coaches.)

The five highest-paid people in The Chronicle’s survey are doctors (including one from Cornell and another from NYU) and big-time college athletics coaches. And, according to the IRS filing, four of USC’s Top Five salaried people are in the athletic department.

Basketball coach Tim Floyd earned $971,264; Athetic Director Mike Garrett $659,489 and assistant football coach Stephen Sarkisian $597,784. (Salaries don’t include employee benefits and expense accounts.)

The only non-athletic department person cracking the Trojan Top Five was Keck School of Medicine Dean Brian Henderson, who earned $748,695.

And, in keeping with the established trend of hired hands in The Chronicle’s survey earning more than the big boss, USC President Steven B. Sample earned $740,764.

-- Greg Johnson