Stricklin: Salaries a challenge

DESTIN — In 1997, Steve Spurrier became the first $2 million head coach in college football.

A little more than 20 years later, LSU gave defensive coordinator Dave Aranda a four-year deal worth $2.5 million annually.

In Spurrier’s day, a $1 million head coaching salary was a king’s ransom. Now it is becoming the cost of business to hire a top coordinator in the SEC.

Alabama pays both of its coordinators more than $1 million each.

“It’s what the market bears,” Crimson Tide athletic director Greg Byrne said Wednesday at the SEC Spring Meetings.

It’s also becoming a bad look and serves as a textbook example of the excesses of big-time college football.

“I think it’s one of the biggest challenges we have in college athletics — what our coaches are making,” UF AD Scott Stricklin said. “They are in a market that allows them to enjoy those kinds of salaries, but I do think the optics of it are not helpful.”

UF announced earlier this month new defensive coordinator Todd Grantham’s three-year, $4.47 million deal. Grantham, who is scheduled to earn $1.39 million next season, is the first UF assistant coach to earn $1 million annually.

He surely will not be the last.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said he sees no end in sight for escalating assistant coaching salaries.

“At the College Football Playoff I was asked the question, and I said, ‘I do think there’s an end,’ ” Sankey said. “Then the next question you’ll ask is, ‘Where is it?’ I don’t know. There is an end, but where it is and what the cause might be I’m not going to jump into that prediction.”

Sankey said all SEC coaching salaries for decades have undergone university approval by independent governing body untethered to athletics.

Many people have grown numb to rapidly rising head coaching salaries. Five SEC head coaches, including UF’s Dan Mullen, make more than $5 million.

Some have suggested a salary cap for coaches, but legally it is not possible and would lead to anti-trust lawsuits, Stricklin said. At the same time, it is increasingly difficult to put a good spin on rising salaries that border on extreme.

“I’m appreciative of the coaches we have and the job that they do, but the optics of that are really uncomfortable,” Stricklin said.