Bison Bites: Dispatch #9

Data bites touching on: Bryant Haines' updated salary, overall PFF FBS rankings, men's basketball lineup efficiency, and offensive/defensive cumulative EPA in 2024

If you’re new enough to Bite-Sized Bison, you might not be familiar with Bison Bites. Each dispatch of Bison Bites is intended to be a quick-hitting list of approximately 3-5 statistics of interest between typical Bite-Sized Bison posts.

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Bryant Haines’ new salary would have ranked 8th among FBS assistant coaches in 2024.

Indiana shelled out an unprecedented amount of cash to bring Bryant Haines from JMU to Indiana after the 2023 season. Haines was the first IU assistant to own a million-dollar salary, and the move – to the untrained eye – could have seemed excessive. Haines made just $189k at JMU, and Indiana boosted its investment in the DC position by $590k to give Haines a near-million-dollar raise to $1.175M. The Hoosiers boosted the on-field assistant salary pool by roughly $1M, and half of it was going to a DC who hadn’t called a Power 4 game yet.

But Curt Cignetti knew. Haines proceeded to boost Indiana’s defensive EPA/play from 116th in 2023 to 19th in 2024 on his way to being a finalist for the Broyles Award.

A program can’t keep a DC like Haines without paying up, and making the leap from Matt Guerreri’s salary in 2023 ($585k) to Haines’ anticipated 2025 salary ($2M), as reported by Michael Niziolek of The Herald-Times, is a much greater ask institutionally than the jump Indiana needed to make to keep Penn State (and other programs) away from its golden DC.

Haines’ boost to $2M also comes at the same time that other programs are beginning to elevate coordinator salaries, as former Ohio State DC Jim Knowles was pulled away by Penn State, who offered $3.1M, and Auburn gave DC DJ Durkin a raise to $2.5M. There were only nine coaches making $2M+ in 2024, but that number will certainly rise in the next couple years. Indiana being one of the first to eclipse that mark suggests that the University means business with its football program. For reference, when Indiana signed Tom Allen as head coach in 2016, his salary was $1.79M, and it was big news after the 2019 season when IU extended Allen’s contract with a pay raise to $3.9M (raised to $4.9M after 2020).

As noted above, Haines’ $2M contract would have tied Ohio State OC Chip Kelly for 8th-highest in 2024. OC Mike Shanahan is slated to make $1.15M, which would’ve ranked 53rd among FBS assistants in 2024, and there is almost certainly a payday in his future as well.

Other notable assistant salaries in 2024 (via USA Today):

• 1. Blake Baker (LSU) - $2.5M

• 2. Wink Marindale (Michigan) - $2.3M

• 3. Jim Knowles (OSU) - $2.3M

• 19. Kane Wommack (Alabama) - $1.55M

• 35. Nick Sheridan (Alabama) - $1.35M

• 106. Charlton Warren (North Carolina) - $859,000

• 152. Willian Inge (Tennessee) - $720k

• 156. Mark Hagen (Louisville) - $700k

• t-156. Bob Bostad (Indiana) - $700k

• t-156. Kevin Peoples (LSU) - $700k

• 369. Matt Guerreri (OSU) - $425k

• 744. Walt Bell (Western Michigan) - $170k

Indiana led the FBS in players graded in PFF’s top-500.