By the time the University of Hawai'i gets around to negotiating football coach June Jones' new contract, his current deal will look like a Kmart blue light special by industry standards.

Standards that were sent through the rafters yesterday by the reported eight-year, $30-plus million bundle Alabama plopped at the feet of its latest presumed savior, job-hopping Nick Saban. That makes Saban college football's highest paid coach, so, pity, if you will, Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, who would fall to No. 2 at $3.45 million. First that Fiesta Bowl overtime loss to Boise State and, now this. Already a humbling month for Stoops, indeed.

So goes the latest round of fiscal foolishness that has overtaken college athletics where at least 45 of the 119 Division I-A members are now paying their football coaches $1 million or more.

Keep in mind that Jones' current deal pays him $800,016 per year — half of which UH said is underwritten by donors — and was below the national Division I-A average of $950,000 before the season started. And, it has two more seasons to run, expiring after the 2008 campaign. Quite the deal in the wake of an 11-3 season.

Even before the Crimson Tide rolled out its fleet of armored cars that average was both ridiculous and soaring. North Carolina is forking over $1.7 million to Butch Davis. Michigan State $1.1 million for Mark Dantonio. Bet on Dennis Erickson being in that ballpark when the details on his Arizona State deal are announced. This while the professors on their campuses receive a mere fraction.

Nor is it just the well-heeled in the power conferences that are handing out significant raises. Louisiana Tech, which had been near the bottom of the nine-team Western Athletic Conference in salaries, is paying its new coach, Derek Dooley, in the neighborhood of $400,000, approaching double what his predecessor, Jack Bicknell, had been getting.

Of course, in most cases the salary of the new coach is only part of the whole head-shaking equation. Usually there is a considerable buyout for the departed coach to compound the madness. At Alabama, the deposed Mike Shula is said to be due $4 million for a two-year buyout. ASU must ante up $2.85 million for the final three years on Dirk Koetter's deal. Since both schools had given their coaches new terms just last year, you wonder if it isn't the athletic directors and presidents who should have been shown the door instead.

If football coaches were traded on the commodities exchange — coaching futures, anyone? — then Boise State's Chris Peterson would be the hottest one going. At a base of $500,000 per year — and $641,666 this year including bonuses — Peterson could be the next Google.

Especially if Alabama comes calling in a season or two.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.