Buster

[57jacket]

Georgia Tech coordinator a candidate to become Middle Tennessee head coach

Middle Tennessee fired Rick Stockstill on Monday after 18 years there.

www.ajc.com

 

[wvGT11]

Pray to the football gods that we don't lose buster. He's a huge reason why we've had such a good offensive transition. We need to fix the defense , not worry about fixing the offense too

 

[BurdellJacket]

CBF has never been an OC at a P5 program before GA Tech. The highest he's ever been was OC at So Miss, Arky St, and MTSU. To be a HC at a P5 program, he'll need a few years of success as an OC at a P5 program or a successful HC at a lower tier program. If those were my two choices, I'd choose the former. Chances of flaming out at a G5 or lower program are pretty high and that would ruin his resume for a P5 HC position.

I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope the bolded is right!!!

 

[awbuzz]

I just finished my first 12 pack of beer for today, I'm not taking any chances so I made a call to Middle Tenn and working out an agreement. I think we offer them Thacker and another defensive coach to be named later. Plus and this is the big one. we will give them Collins phone number (hell he is still looking) and throw in a case of beer.

... rumor is they want us to throw in 2 kegs, not just a 12 or 24 pack.

 

[Bogey]

We have Buster for 2 more years at least. His son, a QB, will be in the 2026 class and he will not be yanking him out of his hs for his last 2 years.

 

[UgaBlows]

We have Buster for 2 more years at least. His son, a QB, will be in the 2026 class and he will not be yanking him out of his hs for his last 2 years.

I agree, and believe Weinke will be our OC afterwards

 

[stech81]

We have Buster for 2 more years at least. His son, a QB, will be in the 2026 class and he will not be yanking him out of his hs for his last 2 years.

he can stay here and coach him at Tech.

 

[CEB]

Anywhere he possibly goes the fanbase should be prepared to all be blocked at some point.

Wha??
Collins’ teams don’t block anybody!

 

[Dinner_Jacket]

Buster coached at MTSU so, he certainly has an edge on other coaches.
We need to pay the man and keep him happy at GT.
Buster is an absolute legend at Valdosta State. We need to keep this old QB around as long as we can.

 

[stinger78]

Keep him happy and all benefit. Fridge hung around a long time for us because he got paid well.

 

[684Bee]

Keep him happy and all benefit. Fridge hung around a long time for us because he got paid well.

I remember when Fridge was getting paid around $400k/$450k and he was the highest paid assistant in the country at that time. Man, how times have changed.

 

[roadkill]

I remember when Fridge was getting paid around $400k/$450k and he was the highest paid assistant in the country at that time. Man, how times have changed.

Surprising - not so much by how much top coordinator salaries have escalated since, because after all it's been 25 years, but more so by the fact that GT was actually paying top dollar for a coach.

 

[cpf2001]

As recently as 2007 we were a leader here: https://www.espn.com/college-football/preview07/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=2967046

Fisher signed a three-year contract with a base salary of $215,000 annually. His compensation at FSU could be more than $400,000, if the Seminoles reach several performance-based incentives.

Fisher isn't the only one cashing in. Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta will make $400,000 this year. Texas will pay offensive coordinator Greg Davis more than $350,000 per year, according to the Dallas Morning News, and co-defensive coordinators Larry Mac Duff and Duane Akina will earn $300,000 each.

Johnson was compensated pretty well early in his tenure too.

But at some point just couldn't keep up anymore, about ~10 years ago.

 

[stinger78]

As recently as 2007 we were a leader here: https://www.espn.com/college-football/preview07/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=2967046



Johnson was compensated pretty well early in his tenure too.

But at some point just couldn't keep up anymore, about ~10 years ago.

Couldn’t or wouldn’t? The GTAA’s finances have been a mess for a long time. However, there was an inflection point leading to steeper contracts about 10 years ago.

 

[roadkill]

As recently as 2007 we were a leader here: https://www.espn.com/college-football/preview07/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=2967046



Johnson was compensated pretty well early in his tenure too.

But at some point just couldn't keep up anymore, about ~10 years ago.

I had no idea. We were paying Patenaude and Thacker salaries at the level of P5 assistants 15-20 years ago. No wonder Key asked for more $$ for assistants.

Edit to add: How in the world did GT justify paying assistants among the largest salaries in football back in the 1999-2007 time frame? It wasn't like we were the richest team then.

 

[GTJackets]

I had no idea. We were paying Patenaude and Thacker salaries at the level of P5 assistants 15-20 years ago. No wonder Key asked for more $$ for assistants.

Edit to add: How in the world did GT justify paying assistants among the largest salaries in football back in the 1999-2007 time frame? It wasn't like we were the richest team then.

Easy. Back then we weren't paying coaches to not coach.

 

[cpf2001]

I had no idea. We were paying Patenaude and Thacker salaries at the level of P5 assistants 15-20 years ago. No wonder Key asked for more $$ for assistants.

Edit to add: How in the world did GT justify paying assistants among the largest salaries in football back in the 1999-2007 time frame? It wasn't like we were the richest team then.

My pet theory is that the high-revenue schools just realized they didn't have to play the same game as the rest. Many of the salary and revenue and expense figures are public since they're state schools anyway, so maybe a few geniuses at the rich schools finally put 2 and 2 together. I haven't researched it thoroughly but numbers like 1M a year for 10 years are certainly easier to do without ten of millions in additional revenue than 5-10M a year, so probably a lot of other programs lost coach salary competitiveness in the last ten years too. You can do the former with 100M revenue; you can't do the latter, so if you have 200M revenue, just go for the killing blow.

(This is also my pet peeve when folks complain about the Hewitt deal. Nuts as it was, it shouldn't have been the program-killer it was - it was expensive and dumb, but it would've been irrelevant if we could've caught up with the inflation anyway.)

 

[roadkill]

Easy. Back then we weren't paying coaches to not coach.

It's not so much that GT wasn't burdened by dead money back then, but the fact that the GTAA had the mindset of paying assistants at the very highest level in football including the factories that strikes me as so at odds with our concept of being one of the "poorer" schools in P5. Even 15-20 years ago. It's an approach that I haven't associated with the GTAA at least since we joined the ACC.

Let's face it, we didn't just fall behind other schools that chose to escalate salaries to extremes. Adjusted for inflation, we were just recently paying our own coordinators much less than 15-20 years ago, at least until Key got a bump for his salary pool.

I'm still trying to wrap my arms around this.

 

[cpf2001]

And the guy signing those checks is the one who pissed off the fanbase by saying even then, with that more-competitive spending, "Georgia Tech can win nine or 10 games, but they will never do it consistently.” The collapse of the AA in the 2010s was really something spectacular to lead to some of the recent budget hires. Goes a long way to explaining why Cabrera had to clean house.

 

[ChicagobasedJacket]

I had no idea. We were paying Patenaude and Thacker salaries at the level of P5 assistants 15-20 years ago. No wonder Key asked for more $$ for assistants.

Edit to add: How in the world did GT justify paying assistants among the largest salaries in football back in the 1999-2007 time frame? It wasn't like we were the richest team then.

Higher donations and far higher attendance. I was a student during those years and Bobby Dodd was packed.