Michigan Football: Mailbag Question — Is Michigan low-balling the Coaching Search?

Posted at 6:00am — 12/13/2007

Michigan Football: Mailbag Question — Is Michigan low-balling the Coaching Search?

A recent e-mail we got from “Steve” wanted to know if Michigan was low balling coaches to come to Michigan by using the quote “honor and privilege to coach at Michigan” and not the money along with what other colleges are offering?

First off when you offer less money than a person is getting that is “low balling” and in today market value of a coach depends on the situation and where the guy is at right now. You can have a coach makes 1.5 million, but be a guy that is a “hot coach” and could see his value rise once a big program comes looking. Urban Meyer is a great example of going from Bowling Green for two years, to Utah in two years and now is one of the highest paid coaches in college football at Florida.

Michigan has been offering competitive pay for head coaches with top flight head coaches range generally from two million to four million dollars. So Michigan is being competitive in that area where Michigan lags are in assistant coaches pay. Top coordinators will get about 500,00 per year while Michigan is in the 200,000 range for coordinators. Top flight assistant coaches usually get in the 200,000 to 250,000 dollar range. Michigan is paying in 100,000 to 150,000 range I have been told.

Not sure exactly how much schools budget for recruiting, but was told by very reliable source Michigan is 750,000 to one million behind the elite schools. Those numbers were given me by Recruiting Coordinators from rival schools and someone close to Michigan. Both gave comparable numbers which lead me to believe they are close to accurate.

Let’s look into how the process has gone so far from what we may know the coaching search. Ferentz makes 3.03 million, but also has an one million bonus for various things. Martin has stated that he was going to go up to three million and we do not know what Martin offered him could have been any where from 2.5 – three million? That is lower than he is making and no way Martin would have gave him a one million bonus to be able to get. Why come here for less money, more pressure and have the expectations to win and not be like at Iowa where your 6-6, 4-4 in big ten and 3-9 against your in-state rival and people are happy.

Michigan supportable called Stoops to see if he was interested and when the guy is making 3.62 mil with a 745,000 bonus and also he is getting three million as another bonus when the season starts in ’08 for being there for ten years. Why would he even consider a 2.5-3 million offer from Michigan. I wonder if he laughed when if they asked if he was interested.

Schiano might not be a so called “low ball” offer, but (IMO) if he was really your guy you should have done more to get him than offer him 2.2 million like Miami of Florida offered him that same figure lasts year and he turned it down especially since he would be leaving a job where he is loved and it was his home where his family and friends are live. To make a guy give that up you have to do more than just barely going over his salary. He would have been coming into a situation where you must beat Ohio State, win bowl games and not lose many games for people to be happy. At Rutgers they make a bowl game they are happy and if they lose only three games they are happy where at Michigan that is a bad season if they lose three games. Schiano is making 1,733,500 with bonus of 530,000 and his bonuses aren’t really that hard to get from when you really look at his contract. Along with the fact his house on campus grounds he got an interest free loan and he had a 750,000 buyout if he left this year from Rutgers.

If you are going to try to steal a coach from a program you got to make it worth his while. Les Miles was a huge “low ball” deal where he was offered 2.5 million from Michigan where he is already making 2.8 million at LSU with possibly up to 3.4 million if they win one more game and that is for five years. So that is almost one million difference and that does not include bonuses which I am sure is more at LSU. Also the big hang up with Miles was not so much his money, but the recruiting budget and also the assistant coaches budget(Big-Time difference) and who knows maybe the other coaches were saying the same thing.

There was talk of Chris Petersen if he was interested, but it was brought up that he has the family issues there. Could it be that Michigan was only looking to offer him not much more than his regular salary we really do not know, but you would have to think if we offered him 2.2-2.5 million he would have looked at the deal a little more? Who knows for sure.

If you believe in your coach and you are at Michigan he should be easily making top ten money since we believe we are an “elite program” than we need to start stepping the money where our arrogance is.

Also we need to raise the money for the assistant coaches and especially the OC/DC. No way an assistant coach at Michigan should only be making 100,000 – 150,000 depending on whom it is and the OC/DC should not only be making 200,000 – 250,000.

At Ohio State they are almost making double that from what I have heard. Also talking about Tressel his salary after this National Championship game he will get to redo his contract again because he has a deal of getting to the NC game and he gets to redo it. Last year he increased his deal by almost 500,000 dollars while also getting more bonus money, but the big thing he did was get more money for his assistant coaches plus getting more money for his recruiting along with more money for the football program in general. Sometimes it is not the base salary it is everything else that is not seen in the contract. So at those numbers we would not be in the top ten under Schiano money by next season.

Like we said again if you are going to strive to be big time program you need to offer big time money not only to your head coach, but everyone involved with the football program. You are not going to get great assistant coaches coming at Michigan for 125,000 and great OC/DC for 200,000. You want great ones you are going to have to pay 500,000 to get DC/OC that know what they are doing and think they got a brain in their head while paying 200,000 – 250,000 for assistant coaches.

Just a reminder, you must be a member to participate on the free Message Board. Here is the link for the registration page for those people interested in becoming a GBMWolverine member of our message board. GBMWolverine Register.

Please comment on our GBMWolverine Message Board about this article and read what others comment.

You can contact us at our e-mail address: GBMWolverine

Please follow us on Twitter: @GBMWolverine

Written by GBMWolverine Staff

Go Blue — Wear Maize!