Don't get me wrong Jeff M as I think Coach Boals will do well and the former AD at Ohio probably should have hired him a few years back. That way his starting salary wouldn't have been near $600,000. Ohio's former AD could have hired him at a salary slightly more than what Geno is currently making at Stony Brook. Maybe his salary would have increased with his performance?
The salaries are still reasonable for a program that is expected to compete regularly in the Top 3 of the MAC.
When Saul was hired in I remember how both he and Schaus considered Ohio to be the top basketball job in the MAC.
It's debatable if Ohio is the top football job in the MAC but Solich is definitely one the highest profile coaches in the conference.
What would Saul have said about the job were a) he not the one hired into it, and b) wasn't (at the time) the league's highest paid coach?
Still the best job in the MAC?
That's a standard throw away line everyone uses. By virtue of saying it you also imply you're the best coach in the league. Anyway, we paid too much for Tim O'Shea and things went up from there. 2012 will be 9 years away this spring.
TOS was just an assistant at BC though. He started at a modest 150k He wasn't the next level, a Bobcat 2.0 coach meaning a major recruiter like Groce or a veteran D1 coach like the last 3 guys that were hired.
The question is do you want to be a bigger D1 sports school? Facilities and pay make Ohio a high mid major level job which is right for a school of Ohio's stature and fan support.
While Boeh made raising Ohio's athletic stature an idea it was Schaus that really made it happen with those salaries, budgets and investments.
Sounds like many of you on here though of of the opinion that nothing has fundamentally changed in relation to Ohio athletics since 1990. My opinion the whole operation has moved up a full level in the last decade or so.