UF AD Scott Stricklin says higher football coordinator salaries are creating bad optics.

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 doing 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.

Some say it’s also become a bad look and serves as an example of the excesses of big-time college football. “I think it’s one of the biggest challenges we have in college athletics, is what our coaches are making,” Florida 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 earlier this month announced 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.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said he sees no end in sight to rising assistant coach 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 that for decades, all SEC coaching salaries have undergone university approval by an independent governing body untethered to athletics.

A decade ago, escalating salaries concerned university presidents.

A 2009 Knight Commission survey of 95 Division I-A university presidents reported that more than 85 percent called compensation levels for football and basketball coaches “excessive.” Since then, many have grown numb to rapidly rising head coach salaries. Five SEC head coaches, including UF’s Dan Mullen, make more than $5 million.

Only Missouri’s Barry Odom ($2.35 million) makes less than $2.7 million.

But Mullen, Odom and the other 12 SEC head coaches are the faces of football programs that also serve as the face of the entire university. Meanwhile, coordinators mostly remain behind the scenes, but are beginning to receive salaries that outstripped head coaching compensation not long ago.

In 2012, the average head coaching salary in Division I college football was $1.64 million.

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

“It would be great just from a budgetary standpoint,” Stricklin said of a cap. “I’m appreciative of the coaches we have and the job that they do, but the optics of that are really uncomfortable.”

Stricklin