New Fresno State football coach Kalen DeBoer can compete with Boise State on assistant salaries
Coach Kalen DeBoer is back in his Fresno State office this week and putting together a football staff with the same salary pool for assistant coaches that Jeff Tedford had last season, which was one of the largest in the Mountain West Conference..
DeBoer has hired Indiana special teams coordinator William Inge, Montana Tech coach Chuck Morrell, North Dakota defensive coordinator Eric Schmidt and Boise State running backs coach Lee Marks, according to sources.
So, there are some pieces in place and some still to come.
But the pool remains unchanged, surprisingly perhaps given the financial stresses on the athletics department struggling to support 21 sports programs.
“We’re going to be consistent with that,” athletics director Terry Tumey said. “We need to invest. We need to invest in our program. We’re coming off a year where we had high hopes, of course, and didn’t reach all of the goals that we wanted, but we’re definitely not going to regress.
“That’s not part of the cards here. We’re going to continue to invest and support the development of these young people, but also these coaches, getting the right people in there. There is a certain cost to doing business here and we’re happy to move forward in that way. We can’t cut.”
Tumey did not give DeBoer a specific number to work with, but the Bulldogs’ salary pool for assistant coaches last season was $2 million, the second-highest in the conference behind Boise State.
Mountain West salary pools
1. Boise State $2.13 million
2. Fresno State $2 million
3. Colorado State $1.95 million
4. Wyoming $1.85 million
5. San Diego State $1.8 million
6. Utah State $1.78 million
7. UNLV $1.64 million
8. San Jose State $1.59 million
9. New Mexico $1.5 million
10. Nevada $1.47 million
11. Air Force N/A
Former Fresno State defensive coordinator Bert Watts was the highest-paid assistant on the Bulldogs’ staff last season at $340,000 with $69,000 available through performance bonuses.
Inge, who is expected to be the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator, was paid $332,880 at Indiana with $110,000 available through bonuses.
Fresno State could make some of those hires official on Friday, or at the start of next week.
DeBoer, who was hired Dec. 6 to replace Tedford and finished the season as the Indiana offensive coordinator in the Jan. 2 Gator Bowl before returning to Fresno, has the authority to be flexible shaping his staff.
“You allow them to move the resources the way they want to,” Tumey said. “They have a maximum number of coaches you can hire, but nobody says you have to hire 10 assistant coaches. You can hire nine, if that’s what you want to do.
“The resources piece here is not the challenge. The challenge for our coach and our staff is it’s attractive here so you have a lot of interest and finding that right mix of a person who can work here and understand what we’re doing, that’s the challenge.”