Big Ten Asst. Coach Salaries

OSU shells out $1.2MM for a crappy defense.

Yeah make no mistake about it, Bielema knew what he was doing.  He must have been eyeing this move for a long time.

enough $ by the time he gets fired to buy a pizza joint and hire OSU grads to deliver for him.

That would be a good measuring stick.

Big money for Borges

....Well its good thing his name is Gorgeous Borges because we sure aint' paying him to call the correct plays. 

Luke Fickell is going to wonder where his 3/4 of a million dollar chair has gone.

Even so, if your assistants are good, they're going to move on anyway aren't they?  It's the natural progression of coaching that moves are made in order to get to a HC position.

For an assistant coach "lifer", the angst makes sense.  A Fred Jackson (or Borges or Mattison for that matter) for example, who has no interest in moving up the ladder - if Wiscy was losing those types due to pay scale, that's an issue.  If your RB coach leaves for another RB coaching job b/c he's offered more money (and no other reason), fair enough.

But did Wiscy have those?  I thought most of the defections were well-thought-of guys who were going to be moving on/up anyway.  If your RB coach is good and wants to be a HC, he's going to leave for a Sun Belt/MAC/Other OC position regardless of the money.  He does this for the added responsibility/challenge and to prove his worth for the next step.

How can Luke Fickell make more money than Greg Mattison?  And how come Greg Mattison isn't storming into Dave Brandon's office demanding a raise?

id be interested to see similar stats for men's basketball

To do some inter-conference comparisions, here is the database from USA Today that lists the head coach and assistant salaries for all FBS programs. It is sortable by conference as well, so you can compare salaries among staffs. The complete base salary listing for Michigan in 2012, for example, is as follows:

For some SEC contrast, here is what Les Miles' staff gets:

This was supposedly updated in November, so it won't capture moves made since then, but it is enough to get a good idea of who spends and who doesn't if you start clicking on various teams.

That makes Borges the highest-paid offensive coordinator in the B1G.  Which is... interesting.

Wisconsin is hard to understand.  They pay Alvarez seven figures to be their AD (making him one of the best-paid in the country), and Bielema was getting a pretty nice salary.  So why not pay for the assistants?

For $2100 less, we have Greg Mattison instead of Luke Fickell.

According to a Wisconsin fan that I know, Wisconsin offered to pay their assistants more but they hated BB. Take that for what it's worth, but that's the word from a bunch of them. It wasn't that Wisconsin was being cheap, it was that no one wanted to stay around BB.

Now, why would you offer huge salaries to new guys? I see if you're bringing in a Greg Mattison, paying him big money. But, they paid what they thought the new assistants deserved and it worked out well for them. They're in the Rose Bowl and Michigan is not. Now, if the assistants want more money then yeah maybe they're worth more. But it's ridiculous to suggest paying more for people who'll take less and get good results. We pay Borges more than Wisconin's offensive coordinator and I'd take Wisconsin's offensive coordinator over Borges.

You don't always have to pay top money for good assistants or to get them at least. It's giving up money to keep them, which like I said Wisconsin was willing to do. I'm sure they'll pay just fine to get the assistants Anderson wants and then they'll pay to keep them. I understand that if you're willing to pay then there's a better chance you get a good coordinator. We overpay ours and we get worse results than Wisconsin. So it's not always about money. 

Given the revenue/profit of the football program and $10 million spending gap to OSU, DB and Hoke must have potential to pay for top position asst as needed.

We have very good recruiting and haven't even lured any superstar recruiting assts with $400k+ (other than Mattison).

Is worth every penny. Borges should return a lot of his money for the second half debacle vs. Ohio.