According to compensation figures released by Ohio State on Monday, and a subsequent report by the Columbus Dispatch, four Buckeye football assistants will be paid over $1 million this season.
Based on over a decade of tracking by USA TODAY, it’ll be the first time four assistant football coaches at a public university will pay seven-figure salaries to that many assistants on one staff. With where assistant salaries are today as opposed to ten years ago, it’s not a stretch to believe that’s never happened in the history of public universities, but that cannot be confirmed.
Those four coaches that will break the $1 million barrier are defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs ($1.4 million), offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson ($1.2 million), and both co-defensive coordinator Greg Mattison and defensive line coach Larry Johnson ($1.113 million each).
A national first: Four Ohio State football assistants will earn more than $1 million in salary https://t.co/chrexiE0ZJ
— BuckeyeXtra.com (@BuckeyeXtra) March 9, 2020
Prior to this year, the salary of Ohio State’s assistant coaches ranked the third highest in the country according to USA TODAY, with a total of $7.25 Million — trailing only Alabama and Clemson. The new total will now be $7.94 Million. It’s too early to tell if that puts OSU in the same ballpark or more than where the Tide and Tigers were last season.
I guess if you want to win these days in big-time college football, you have to pay not only your head coaches, but the guys that surround them. The teams winning everything are doing just that.