JMU increases football staff salaries

HARRISONBURG — James Madison will pay new football coach Mike Houston’s assistants $715,000 in their first year with the Dukes, according to contracts provided to the Daily News-Record, nearly $90,000 more than it paid last year’s staff.

And the Dukes spent big on their new defensive coordinator.

Bob Trott, a 61-year-old former Richmond defensive coordinator, received a three-year contract worth $130,000 annually. It’s the most money and first multi-year deal Madison has ever given a football assistant, according to JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne.

Trott has a contract that runs through Jan. 31, 2019.

“Coach Houston came to us and asked if we would consider that,” Bourne said. “Given the experience level and reputation of Bob, we felt like that was appropriate.”

Offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick ($90,000) has a one-year deal, as do the other assistants. The one-year contracts are set to expire on Jan. 31, 2017, and can be renewed annually.

The financial information, provided in response to a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request, was released after Trott signed his contract last week.

The other salaries include: inside linebackers coach Byron Thweatt ($80,000), outside linebackers coach John Bowers ($70,000), offensive line coach Jamal Powell ($65,000), defensive line coach Jeff Hanson ($65,000), running backs coach De’Rail Sims ($60,000), cornerbacks coach Tripp Weaver ($55,000), tight ends coach/run-game coordinator Bryan Stinespring ($50,000) and receivers coach Drew Dudzik ($50,000).

The Dukes’ total staff compensation is $89,667, or 14.3 percent, more than the total paid to ex-coach Everett Withers’ staff during the 2015 season. Withers left to take over at FBS Texas State in January.

“One of the things we do is track the competitive salaries across the United States in different sports programs,” Bourne said, “and we thought this year as we moved into our new contracts it would be an appropriate time to make some adjustments.”

In 2015, Withers’ highest paid assistant was Bowers, who made $81,000 in his role as outside linebackers coach/recruiting coordinator/assistant head coach. He was retained by Houston.

Under Withers, co-offensive coordinator Brett Elliott, defensive coordinator Steve Sisa and defensive line coach Antoine Smith each made $71,400.

New director of football administration Dale Steele will make $60,000 with the Dukes. Withers’ director of football operations, John Streicher, made $61,200 last season.

Steele, 60, is a former assistant at Baylor, East Carolina and Kansas State. He was the start-up head coach from 2006-12 at Campbell, an FCS school that hadn’t offered football since 1950.

In 2015, JMU paid its 2,868 full-time employees a median salary of $54,125. The average salary was $58,253.97.

It’s unclear how much Trott, a longtime FBS and NFL assistant coach with 40 years of experience, was making at Richmond, a private school that is not required to release salary information. Trott coached the Spiders’ defense from 2010-15.

Stinespring, meanwhile, took a big pay cut coming to Madison. A longtime Virginia Tech assistant, the Clifton Forge native was paid $342,080 last season as tight ends coach, the last of his 26 years working under Frank Beamer.

Kirkpatrick, East Carolina’s receivers coach and recruiting coordinator last season, made $157,500 in 2015 with the Pirates. Those figures are based on research done last season by USA Today.

The $715,000 given to JMU’s 10 assistants would have ranked above several FBS staffs in 2015. Louisiana-Monroe ($683,050), Charlotte ($647,025), and New Mexico State ($646,883) all paid its assistant coaches less than what the Dukes will pay its assistants in 2016.

“A lot of it depends on the applicants and their experience levels, but for us we try to identify a base salary budget that we think is viable and reasonable in relation to our program and our peers,” Bourne said. “Given our research and where we saw some of the peer programs, we feel like the salaries are in line with where they need to be.”

Bourne said some of those peer schools include five-time defending national champion North Dakota State and Colonial Athletic Association rivals Delaware and Richmond.

The JMU contracts include a $4,000 annual stipend for a vehicle (except for Steele, who will not receive the stipend) and performance bonuses for making the playoffs — a week’s salary for each of the NCAA’s first three rounds and an additional half-month’s salary for making the FCS national championship game.

Houston’s annual salary of $300,000 is $25,000 less than Withers made in 2015. But the former Citadel coach has retention bonuses built into his contract, which Withers did not have.

Houston, who made $210,000 last year with the Bulldogs, is not eligible to receive those bonuses from JMU until after his third season.

If Houston stays at Madison for three seasons, he is slated to receive a $75,000 bonus. After his fourth season, Houston would receive an additional $93,750, and if he completes the duration of his five-year contract, he would receive another $81,250.