The trend of rapidly accelerating pay for major-college head football coaches is being replicated — and then some — for their top assistants.
With many contracts being negotiated or finalized, nearly a dozen schools in the NCAA's 120-school Football Bowl Subdivision have made deals under which they will be spending at least 38 percent more on their offensive or defensive coordinator in 2010 than they did in 2009.
These increases come a year after four assistants —Tennessee's Monte Kiffin and Ed Orgeron, Texas' Will Muschamp and Washington's Nick Holt— joined Florida State's Jimbo Fisher in having deals worth at least $600,000 a year. (Kiffin and Orgeron have moved to Southern California, and Fisher has become Florida State's head coach.) They also come amid continuing financial distress within higher education.
Dutch Baughman, executive director of the Division 1A Athletic Directors' Association, says coordinators' salaries are rising in a fashion that is without precedent in college athletics.