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When Mike Locksley arrived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he had already been a head coach (New Mexico), offensive coordinator (Illinois, Maryland) and position coach at multiple schools.
Despite his long list of accomplishments, there was no grand welcome or red-carpet arrival when he joined Nick Saban’s analyst army. Instead, Locksley received some Nike school gear, a seat at a folding table in a windowless room and a mandate to get to work as another cog in the machine.
“People are like, who is this guy?” said Locksley, now the coach at Maryland. “You’re there for three or four months before anybody even knows you.”
Saban had discovered a market advantage that revolutionized the sport. He could take experienced coaches who may have failed elsewhere and bring them into his Alabama program as off-field analysts.
Locksley teamed with Steve Sarkisian, fresh off a failed stint as USC’s coach, to help offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin with third-down and red zone strategy. The duo made a combined $80,000.
“He’d take it, put it on the call sheet and go ahead and call a helluva game,” Locksley said. “I’m saying to myself this is genius because you’ve got two dudes that have called plays, game plan and it gives Lane a tremendous starting point.”
Grabbing coaches like Locksley, Sarkisian and Billy Napier on the cheap for the behind-the-scenes roles helped spark an unbelievable run of success for Saban. But with looming athlete revenue sharing certain to eat into athletic department budgets across the country, could the days of the analyst armies be numbered?
New Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer’s on-field staff is actually slightly more expensive than Saban’s from 2023, but the program has slimmed down its off-field analyst workforce from…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/end-of-the-analyst-army-why-revenue-sharing-could-curb-college-footballs-off-field-staff-swell/
Author : John Talty
Publish date : 2024-06-06 14:01:00
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