It apparently takes a very well-qualified individual to put on a three-hour event once a year.
As bowl season shifts into high gear, the student-athletes putting on the show get gift baskets. The gentlemen in charge of putting on the bowls get insane mega-salaries. (Many bowl games are run by tax-exempt, non-profit organizations, and therefore post their 990 tax return forms, which disclose executive compensation, online each year. The info below, then, is about the compensation these various execs received in 2011. Maybe they all took vows of poverty this year! Probably not, though.)
Jim McVay made $753,946 to run the Outback Bowl.
Read more about McVay and the state of bowl-executive compensation in this USA Today investigation.
Via: www2.tbo.com
Paul Hoolahan made $634,586 to run the Sugar Bowl.
In the year of the 2008 Sugar Bowl, Hoolahan received $645,386 despite the fact that the bowl lost money.