The college football coaching carousel went back in motion with some minor changes. Texas State head coach Dennis Franchione reportedly retired from the game and Ball State head coach Pete Lembo stepped down as head coach of the Cardinals so he could accept a spot on the Maryland coaching staff as an assistant to new head coach DJ Durkin. Yes, a head coach took on an assistant role on his own. It is not as strange as you might think.
Money is a clear motivator here, but it remains to be seen if this is as simple as Lembo looking for a bigger paycheck. That may not necessarily be the case, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Before we do, we should also acknowledge the challenges of coaching at a program like Ball State. Ball State’s ability to sufficiently fund the program is a stress on an head coach, and it is a reality that continues to be a concern for those attached to Group of Five schools as the divide between the haves and the have-nots in college football continues to expand. Programs like Ball State simply cannot keep the cash available the way Ohio State will. So this move and decision may be motivated by money, but it extends deeper beyond the simple money grab for Lembo. As mentioned, this may not be a pure money grab for the now former Ball State head coach.
USA Today compiles an annual list of college football coaching salaries. According to the most recent data from this past year, Ball State was paying Lembo a total of $517,750, making Lembo the 103rd highest-paid coach in college football (keep in mind some schools do not have to reveal coaching salary information, so the contracts for some coaches are unknown. That said, of the schools not on USA Today’s books, only Wake Forest, Tulsa and SMU may have coaching salaries that could hypothetically be lower than Bal State’s pay for Lembo. Pouring over the pay for assistant coaches would also reveal some low figures for Lembo’s assistant coaching staff. More importantly, the contracts for Maryland’s assistants is even more revealing.
Mike Locksley was paid $898,940 by Maryland last year. For those who hate math, that is roughly $382,000 more than Lembo was being paid as a head coach at Ball State. We do not know how much Lembo, or other former head coaches on Maryland’s staff (Scott Shafer or Mike London) will be making at Maryland just yet, but and it is possible none will make as much as Locksley received. No other assistant coach at Maryland was paid more than $294,000. One can safely assume Maryland will find a way to provide Durkin with a sufficient assistant coaching staff, and with the support coming in from Under Armour the finances at Maryland should be in better shape in the coming years to help make this a successful program. Keeping a head coach is one thing, but keeping assistants satisfied is critical.
Lembo was allotted a total of $910,300 to spend on assistant coaches. Last year, Maryland budgeted for $2,783,060 for its assistant coaches. That number should bump up for Durkin’s new staff as Maryland continues to move past former budget concerns entering its third year as a member fo the Big Ten (which means larger Big Ten revenue shares are coming for the Terps).
Lembo leaving Ball State as head coach for an assistant role at a power conference program may strike some as odd, but it is not unprecedented. One only has to go back to January to find the last time it happened. Dan Enos, who had been the head coach at Central Michigan, abandoned his post to take an assistant coaching gig at Arkansas in the SEC. As an assistant at Arkansas, Enos was paid $550,000. At Central Michigan, Enos was paid $360,000 as a head coach. Enos also shed light on the reality of being a head coach, at least at a program like Central Michigan (and fellow MAC program Ball State).
“At one point in my career, I wanted to be a head coach, and that was the whole thing I dreamed about and talked about,” Enos said to Coaching Search last February. “I’ve been a head coach. The one thing I’ll say about a head coach: It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I had a coach tell me one that, one time, a very successful NFL head coach told him that. ‘Remember, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’ That hit home with me.”
Maybe Lembo felt the same way at Ball State, where a nice start has been followed up by decreasing win totals each of the past few seasons. At Maryland, Lembo will be involved in a competitive division with Michigan State, Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State as Maryland’s division foes. This is a solid job to take on for Lembo, even if there is a mild pay cut at first.
