+Cam newton $375,000 salary in 2011
The bounty from Auburn's 2010 BCS National Championship certainly extended to the coaching staff. Offensive Coordinator Gus Malzahn's new $1.3 million salary is more than three times what he made the year prior and more than enough to make him the highest-paid assistant in college football. Head Coach Gene Chizik, whose base salary was $2.1 million last year before bonuses from the national title, saw his annual paycheck increase by 50%.
Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban's $6.1 million pay for 2010 made him college football's highest-paid coach and among the best compensated in the sport. The massive increase over 2009's $5.2 million figure was largely due to restructuring of how the payments of specific bonuses were timed. Saban's annual salary is $4.6 million and his 2011 pay is expected to be back on par with last year's figure.
Last week the UA trustees green-lighted a slew of new contracts for Saban's assistants that kept the Crimson Tide staff among the best-paid in the nation. That included a $62,000 raise for Crimson Tide DC Kirby Smart which makes him at No. 2 in pay among SEC assistants and the lead among the conference's defensive coordinators. OC Jim McElwain got a $100,000 raise that put him in the top quarter of the conference for his position in terms of pay.
While Florida might be saving $1.3 million a year in exchanging Head Coach Urban Meyer for former Longhorn's DC Will Muschamp, the pay to the assistants on the staff has increased substantially. New OC Charlie Weis's salary is more than double that of Steve Addazio's and Dan Quinn's cool half mil is $80,000 more than former DC Teryl Austin's annual haul.
Over in Starkville, the panjandrums at Mississippi State were so happy with Dan Mullins' performance they more than doubled his salary in the off-season to $2.7 million putting him on-par with Florida's new HC and firmly in the middle of the conference's pay scale. New Bulldogs DC Chris Wilson will pull in $300,000 this year; $100,000 more than former DC Manny Diaz who left for Texas and $60,000 more than his previous salary on the staff.
In Arkansas, the rewards of the Ryan Mallett experience weren't nearly as lucrative as the blessing Cam Newton bestowed upon the Plains but they were not insubstantial either. Petrino saw his $2.7 million salary get increased by almost a third and OC Garrick McGee had an additional $125K per year in his stocking.
Les Miles held pat on his $3.751 million per year but new OC Steve Kragthorpe's $700,000 marks a quarter-million-dollar pay hike for the position previously occupied by Cary Crowton. DC John Chavis saw a $100,000 raise for his efforts over the past year.
To help everyone keep track at home, we've compiled a chart comparing the pay for the conference's head coaches, offensive coordinators and defensive coordinators. It was assembled using the USA Today's Coaches' Salary Database for 2010 as a baseline. That report was assembled from a variety of sources and published last December. From that we have scoured newspaper items for updates on salaries for each position. A list of these articles with links is below the jump.
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