FAYETTEVILLE — The first two years of Tim Horton’s coaching career, he had to vacate his home in Boone, N.C., for a herd of zebras every time Appalachian State played a football game at Kidd Brewer Stadium.
Horton, now Arkansas’ running backs coach/recruiting coordinator, was paid $5,000 his first year as a graduate assistant at AppalachianState in 1990 and $7,500 in 1991.
To help make ends meet, he lived in the officials’ locker room at the Mountaineers’ stadium.
“When we had a home game, I had to clear out and make sure it was ready for the officials ” Hortonsaid. “But at least it had a bathroom.
“Hey, everybody has to pay their dues in coaching. That’s just the way it goes.”
If a coach is able to survive long enough in the volatile profession, those dues can pay off handsomely, especially in the SEC.
The SEC has six of the 15 football programs paying assistants more than $2 million combined this year - including Arkansas - according to a USA Today national survey.
There were some schools that didn’t provide financial information, including Southern California, Notre Dame, Penn State, Miami and TCU.
Tennessee has the highest-paid assistants at $3,325,000, followed in the top five by Texas ($2,948,689), LSU ($2,75,285), Alabama and Auburn ($2,560,000).
Arkansas ranks 13th nationally at $2,034,688, ranging from defensive coordinator Willy Robinson ($378,238) to inside linebackers coach Reggie Johnson ($148,000).
Horton’s $193,400 compensation ranks sixth on the Razorbacks’ staff and 223rd nationally.
“Even though you get paid what you do, sometimes you still think you’d be better off getting paid by the hour because you put in so much work and so much time away from your family,” Hortonsaid. “I think everyone is thankful to get what we get .... but with the high paycheck, there comes a lot of pressure.
“That’s the nature of the business, and if you produce you get to stay. If you don’t, you don’t.
“You’ve got to win, and you’ve got to do things the right way as well.”
Tennessee defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin, who held the same position at Arkansas in 1977-1979, is the nation’s highest-paid assistant at $1.2 million and is due to receive a $300,000 retention bonus at the end of December.
He took a pay cut from the $2 million he was paid in the NFL as Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive coordinator to work for his son, Tennessee Coach Lane Kiffin.
Then there is Ed Orgeron, a former Arkansas graduate assistant and Ole Miss head coach, who ranks No. 3 among assistants’ pay at $650,000. He is the Volunteers’ defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator.
“I really think you have to spend money to make money,” Lane Kiffin said in justifying the cost of Tennessee’s staff. “When you go out and get those coaches, that’sgoing to translate into recruiting, winning, ticket sales.
“I think it’s a smart move by athletic directors at major programs, because it’s an investment. We invest all kinds of money into our stadiums, in our facilities, obviously in order to win and recruit better.
“Well, what better way to invest money to get money back than in your staff?”
South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier said SEC schools can afford to pay more for assistant coaches because of the conference’s 15-year, $2.25 billion television contract with ESPN.
“Some of these schools have decided, ‘Hey, let’s start spending it on assistant coaches,’ ” Spurrier said. “So when one starts it, the others pretty much have to follow.”
Spurrier said it’s good to see an increase in salaries for the assistants.
“Sometimes I think the head coaches make way too much in relation to what the assistants make,” he said. “Now, the head coach should make more, don’t get me wrong. But I think there’s been a little imbalance there, and this will maybe help a little bit.”
Arkansas offensive line coach Mike Summers said he doesn’t know of anyone who got into the profession to get rich.
“I would say to a man, we all got into coaching because of the impact that we can have on kids,” said Summers, whose compensation is $233,250. “What we got paidwas a way to make a living, but that wasn’t a driving force for why we got into it.”
Kentucky Coach Rich Brooks, noting that he’s “an old guy” at 68, said he’s surprised at how all the salaries have increased in college sports.
“The thing has gotten a little out of whack, and it just speaks to the pressure that football programs are put under to generate revenue to make the entire sports programs operable,” Brooks said.
Chris Bequette, a former Arkansas offensive lineman who was a graduate assistant at Appalachian State, is now a financial planner with his own firm - America Coaches Wealth Management - which specializes in investing for coaches. Bequette said salaries for some assistant coaches have doubled in the past five years.
Bequette’s client list included about 80 assistant coaches.
“I think it has something to with the NFL competing with colleges for the best assistants,” Bequette said. “That’s really helped the coaches get paid what they deserve.
“You’ve got to understand that at a lot of places, the football program is the front door for the university, so doing well in football means so much for that school.”
Even schools that are struggling on the field are willing to compete for top assistant coaches. Paul Petrino, whose total package for being Arkansas’ offensive coordinator this season was $308,000, recently went to Illinois as offensive coordinator for $475,000.
The man Petrino replaced, Mike Schultz, was paid $260,000 at Illinois.
Compared to this year’s figures, Petrino’s salary at Illinois would make him thenation’s sixth-highest-paid assistant.
“All coaches’ salaries are driven by the market, and I think the market is crazy right now,” Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long said earlier this year. “But it’s a reality that we have to deal with.”
Long said that speaking as a businessman whose responsible for balancing the athletic department’s budget, he hopes coaches’ salaries don’t keep climbing, at least not at the rate they have been the past couple of years.
“Now, on the other side of the equation, I hope that our team has great years, and if that puts pressure on me to raise our coaches’ salaries to keep them, we’ll have to deal with that,” he said. “But I do have the financial obligation to balance the books, and we are one of the few schools in the country who don’t depend on any outside resources, and we’regoing to remain that way.”
USA Today reported that a recent survey of presidents and chancellors from Football Bowl Subdivision schools by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics showed that 85 percent of those responding believe coaches compensation is “excessive.”
The coaches obviously don’t see it that way. South Carolina’s assistant head coach Ellis Johnson ($359,300 per year) defended the SEC’s salary structure.
“We don’t play the Knight Commission and we don’t compete against people that have that theory [arguing fiscal restraint],” Johnson told The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C. “We compete in the SEC.
“You get in the left lane and go slow in the SEC, they’ll run over you.”
Sports, Pages 15 on 12/24/2009