If they felt he was worth it they would have already offered him more money. I look at it from a value standpoint.
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In Steve's defense, he didn't say T-Buck was out of the picture, he just said it wasn't a done deal and things has slowed down a bit.
My guess is we were looking at a DC that would also be Safeties coach and it didn't work out. Mel Tucker perhaps
Well thats absolutely what happened. We even talked money with Tucker. Not sure if Georgia offered more (which I'm sure they did), Tucker's relationship with Smart was the final factor, or what- but we were getting close with Tucker. As Ive said- I think Tucker or Allen would be a win for us. I love the Buckley choice- he would be a very good recruiter and is probably a good coach.
My question is when did we talk to Mel Tucker? I seriously doubt we had a sit down with him. Knowing Saban I really doubt he let Tucker lose for an interview the week of the national championship.
What did Hughes make? Are we making any progress in the assistants salaries department?
Hughes made $400k with up to a $33k bonus.
FWIW -- one thing that definitely always has to be comparable -- OM just upped their assistant pool to $4.26mil. Ours is currently $3.29mil. Not saying that anyone on staff other than Gonzo deserves a raise right now -- but we've never done a great job investing in assistants.
And just to drive home the point that we have to up our assistants' pay to play big boy football, Alabama just raised their S&C coach up to 600K/yr to keep him. So now Alabama's S&C coach makes more than we paid ANY coach on our entire staff last year. Diaz would have gotten to 600K this coming year had he stayed.
Aren't we like doubling what Buckley makes now? Seems we made a good offer... Why offer more just for the hell of it?
If this happens, we've got two young NFL guys coaching our secondary with ties to MS. The way CDM is identifying coaching candidates is pretty impressive. Outside of the constant churn at DC and his reluctance to make Hev prioritize recruiting, you really can't put much else on Mullen. Given the lack of financial commitment to assistants that we've shown historically, he's doing pretty damn good at finding good coaches.