LSU ups ante to keep Aranda

Published 7:00 pm Friday, January 5, 2018

Once word started booming around the internet that yet another coaching salary ceiling had been obliterated, you didn’t really have to wonder long about where the dateline on the story would be.

Where else would it be but Baton Rouge?

Who else but LSU always seems to be involved when college football does a collective gasp as the compensation bar skips a couple of levels with a flashy, mostly expensive hire or raise?

Dave Aranda was already the highest paid assistant in college football at $1.8 million year; he was schedule for a “modest” raise to $1.84 million for next season.

The way money bounces around college football these days, the $2 million barrier for assistant coaches was an easy target. It was assumed it was about to be breached.

LSU took a sledge hammer to it, giving Aranda $2.5 million per year for four years, all $10 million of it guaranteed.

What if one of Aranda’s wards had knocked down that Notre Dame pass Monday? Would we be talking $3 million a year?

According to USA Today’s coaching salary data base, $2.5 million is more than 85 head coaches at the FBS level make — more than even one SEC coach, Missouri’s Barry Odom, takes home.

Of course it was LSU that did it. 

No surprise that it was in response to another power play by Texas A&M, which evidently has producing oil wells right on campus. Jimbo Fisher’s $75 million guaranteed contract over 10 years barely raises an eyebrow anymore.

But for my money — which admittedly is a lot less than Aranda’s stash — LSU started this whole business of throwing cash at coaches like drunken sailors on leave. 

Say what you will about the state of higher education in Louisiana, but Louisiana State University is always on the cutting edge when it comes to improving the bank accounts of college coaches.

The school has that convenient disclaimer that no tax dollars are spent, nor are any house pets harmed, in the pursuit of football perfection.

But it began, basically, in December of 1999 when LSU gave Nick Saban $1.2 million a year to come save the football program. 

That sounds like walking-around cash these days, but a million dollars was real money back then.

In retrospect, it might have been the best investment LSU ever made. 

But Saban, though widely respected in football’s inner circles, was relatively unproven at the time with Michigan State, and only two coaches — mega-superstars Bobby Bowden at Florida State and Steve Spurrier at Florida — were making a million a year.

Within a short few short years, coaching agents were spreading the word — if you weren’t spending north of a million a year on a head coach, you weren’t serious about it and deserved the wrath of the your fan base.

Which at least fast-forwarded us to a $2.5 million assistant coach.

But this really wasn’t about money — really it wasn’t.

Not for LSU, at least. Maybe for Aranda — though gosh knows when the mad genius will ever find the time to spend any of it while holed up 24/7 in that X-and-O laboratory of his.

But for LSU it was critical.

Aranda, though talented, was at the right place at the right time.

For LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva, in particular, keeping Aranda was a career decision — his own.

Texas A&M is doing its dangdest to be LSU’s natural rival.

Never mind what a scary proposition the Aggies would be with a real defense.

Texas A&M already lured one high-profile LSU coach when it swooped down and took another defensive coordinator, John Chavis three years ago. 

Alleva was rightly criticized for the way he handled that negotiation, even though it turned out OK for the Tigers. It eventually begat Aranda, who’s thrived at LSU, and Chavis had mediocre success with the Aggies, who on Thursday settled on Notre Dame’s Mike Elko.

But in this case, Alleva couldn’t afford not to pay Aranda whatever it took to keep history from repeating itself.

Alleva’s career is now dependent on the job Ed Orgeron does as head coach.

The working “process,” to borrow a Saban word, is a little different. It’s based on having a pair of rock-star coordinators free to work their magic, not a big-name head coach (Alleva twice failed to reel in Fisher and then settled for Orgeron, relatively cheap).

Already, Orgeron apparently is rethinking the offensive side of the equation. By all accounts he’s ready to cut ties with offensive rock star Matt Canada. It might have already been done if they hadn’t had to turn all their attention to keeping Aranda.

The late loss to Notre Dame in the Citrus Bowl — on a faux pas by Aranda’s defense — already cast a cloud on what otherwise was an encouraging 9-4 finish to Coach O’s first season.

Losing both coordinators just one year into this grand experiment would not have been a good look.

Panic may well have set in.

Instead, as Orgeron said, “I’m happy to report Aranda has agreed to be with our program for years to come.”

Or anyway, at least until some moneyed somebody decides Aranda is worth the raise and the buyout of his contract.