Heading into the 2020 college football season, Michigan's Jim Harbaugh was the fourth-highest-paid coach in the sport at slightly more than $8 million per year (per USA Today), but he was also the only Power Five coach with less than two years remaining on his contract, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The three highest-paid coaches were Nick Saban, Ed Orgeron and Dabo Swinney, the three men responsible for putting together the only rosters to win national championships since 2015.
Basically, Michigan was paying Harbaugh the going rate for a national champion, even though he hadn't made it to a Big Ten championship game in his first half-decade at the helm.