A penny saved is a penny earned, right? Well, that’s not quite the case at Ohio State.
Earlier, we learned that the Buckeyes had docked head coach Urban Meyer $570,507.68 in salary due to his three-game suspension as a result of his handling of domestic abuse allegations. While it might seem like the school would be able to count that as six-figure savings on the balance sheet, it turns out OSU is plowing that right back into another coach -- namely, the guy who filled Meyer’s role the past two months.
Documents obtained by The Columbus Dispatch show that offensive coordinator Ryan Day will earn a $487,000 bonus on September 30 as “added compensation” that is essentially a bonus for running the program while Meyer was suspended. In the interim role, Day guided the Buckeyes to a 3-0 record and kept the team in the top five of the polls after they beat TCU over the weekend.
While the school still saves nearly $84,000 on the accounting transaction with the two coaches, that does not figure in the costs incurred for the school to investigate Meyer, AD Gene Smith and the former assistant that prompted this entire episode in Zach Smith.
With Day already set to make roughly $1 million this season before other bonuses, the nearly $1.5 million he will likely take home in 2018 will still put him in the upper echelon of assistant coaches on the salary scale. Though Clemson’s Brent Venables and LSU’s Dave Aranda are over the $2 million mark, Day’s total would be right around the fifth-highest paid assistant in college football based on 2017 salaries in the USA Today database.
Given the performances on the field so far and the perfect record, you can probably find more than one Buckeyes fan calling it all money well spent.