Okay, so the other day I got curious about Shawn Clark’s salary. You know, the football coach over at Appalachian State. It just popped into my head, wondering what guys like that actually pull in.

My first move, obviously, was just hitting up the search engines. Typed in the usual stuff: “Shawn Clark salary”, “App State football coach pay”, that kind of thing. Got a bunch of results right away, mostly sports news sites and some chatter.
I poked around those news articles first. Seemed like a few places reported numbers when he got hired or signed an extension. They mentioned figures, but you know how news goes, sometimes it’s spot-on, sometimes it’s an estimate or just the base pay without all the extra stuff.
Digging a bit deeper
Then I thought, okay, Appalachian State is a public university, right? Their salaries should be public record, maybe? So, I tried finding that info directly. Went to the university website, clicked around the HR section, looked for budget reports or employee salary databases. Man, those university websites can be a maze. Didn’t find a simple list right off the bat.
I also checked some state employee salary lookup tools for North Carolina. Sometimes these databases have the info, but you gotta know exactly where to look and how to search. Spent a bit of time on that, wading through lists of names and departments. Found some salary data for state employees, but pinning down the specifics for the head coach, with all the athletic department complexities, wasn’t straightforward.
- Searched general news sites.
- Tried the official university website.
- Looked into state salary databases.
Found some consistency in the reported base salary range across different news outlets from around the time his contract was announced or updated. Things like bonuses, incentives for winning games, bowl appearances, that stuff is harder to nail down precisely. It often depends on the year’s performance.
So, what did I find out? Well, I got a pretty good ballpark figure from the news reports and some database hints. It seems like his base pay is in a certain range, which is publicly reported when contracts are approved. But the exact total amount he pockets each year? That probably fluctuates with bonuses and perks. It wasn’t like there was one single, simple number handed to me on a platter.
It took some digging, clicking through different kinds of sources. Not super hidden, but not laid out easily either. Just wanted to share how I went about looking for it. Sometimes you just gotta piece things together from different places.