It Pays NOT To Be The Head Honcho

For the 2nd time this offseason, assistant coaches are in the headlines. Not only are they making waves, but they are doing so because they are getting paid a lot of coinage. Oh, and in both situations they are from the SEC.

South Carolina announced they were raising their non-head honchos income by nearly 18% back in early May. The total salary for assistant coaches alone is 2.1 million clams. This included a 100% salary increase for Ellis Johnson who will make $700,000 as the assistant head coach for defense. <— That by the way sounds like an unimportant cabinet position in the White House, but I digress.

And not to be out done, of course, is the Florida Gators. On Wednesday, the Gators announced that assistant coaches will have a salary of at least 2.74 million. In this fascinating bit of circumstances, coaches will get a $10,000 bonus as part of the school’s new apparel contract with Nike, a car dealership “hookup” and the chance to earn even more money if the team performs well. Leading the way for the Gator’s crew of coaches is d-coordinator Teryl Austin who will look to replace Charlie Strong now that he’s moved onto Louisville. Austin will earn a base of $440,000 in 2010.

Kids, this teaches us some very important things.

1. You don’t have to be the head coach at a big-time SEC program to make a lot of money. In fact, being 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th in charge will pay just fine and you won’t have to deal with nearly the same amount of pressure.

And 2. It might suck to work under a guy like Urban Meyer on a daily basis, but holy hell does it pay well.