Editor’s note: For the latest updates and highlights from Michigan vs. Washington in the national championship game, follow USA TODAY Sports’ live coverage.
When Ryan Grubb decided at 29 to give up a career in agriculture and pursue football coaching full-time, he knew what he was signing up for: long hours, high-stress situations, limited vacation time and most likely, a salary that wouldn’t inspire jealousy.
Grubb got his first full-time coaching job in 2007 at Sioux Falls, an NAIA school. There, Kalen DeBoer hired him to “coach the offensive line, run the strength and conditioning program, do the laundry and drive the bus,” Grubb joked to USA TODAY Sports, acknowledging that at schools with smaller budgets, everyone has to multitask.
“Every day it was, ‘I gotta go set up the gym for conditioning, Johnny needs his helmet fixed and someone needs their ankles taped.’ It was all part of the gig.” For these tasks, he was paid $2,700 per season.
So Grubb is as surprised as anyone that, now as the University of Washington’s 45-year-old offensive coordinator, he makes $2 million annually.
“It’s weird,” Grubb admitted.
But such is life for the guy calling plays for the No. 2 team in the country, which is undefeated (13-0) and plays No. 1 Michigan on Monday night for the national title (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
In fact, Grubb’s pay has become so lucrative over the last year, with two raises totaling nearly $1 million, that he boasts one of the biggest year-over-year increases any assistant has received since USA TODAY Sports started tracking assistant salaries in 2010.
“I’m almost glad sometimes that I don’t have the time to sit and overanalyze it,” Grubb said. “But I have people who remind me. My brother-in-law is one of my best friends in the world, he’s 100 times smarter than me, an engineer who makes really good money. He loves sports but he’s a really rational person. He’ll say to me, ‘You’re making more money than doctors who save people’s lives, this is pathetic.’ ”
He’s fine with the ribbing, he said. It keeps him humble.
Sky-high salaries for head coaches have become commonplace in college sports, particularly with football, typically the biggest revenue-generator on campuses. When head coaches make eye-popping eight-figure salaries — some argue that at more than $11.4 million annually, seven-time national championship coach Nick Saban of Alabama is actually underpaid — no one so much as blinks.
It’s also not uncommon for head coaches who have great seasons and are suddenly generating interest on the hiring market to get sizable raises from season to season: Think Lane Kiffin’s jump from $5 million to $7.2 million to $9 million over three years at Ole Miss, or Josh Heupel’s bump from $5 million to $9 million this offseason at Tennessee.
In the ever-evolving arms race throughout college football, assistants making north of $1 million is increasingly common as well, according to USA TODAY Sports’ annual survey of assistant coaches’ salaries. In 2018, 21 assistants, all at the Power Five level, made more than $1 million annually; in the 2023 season, that number has jumped to 66. Often, assistant coaches will get big paydays when jumping from one school to the next. Grubb, on the other hand, got his pay raise by staying with the same employer.
Grubb wasn’t the only assistant to get a significant increase either; after being interviewed by the Philadelphia Eagles, Georgia co-defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann went from $805,000 in 2022 to $1.9 million this season. (Georgia, where assistants typically only talk twice a season, did not make Schumann available to USA TODAY Sports.)
But Grubb’s rise up the coaching ranks and pay scale is unique.
From farming to football
A former small-college running back and wide receiver, Grubb graduated from Buena Vista University, a D-III school in Storm Lake, Iowa, in 1999. He got a job as a hog farmer, a natural fit for someone who grew up working on farms in Kingsley, Iowa (population: 1,396).
But he missed the camaraderie of football so desperately he started helping at his alma mater, Kingsley-Pierson High. He couldn’t get enough.
“It was like ‘God, I love this, how do I do this all the time?’ I didn’t know anything, but I start just cold-calling schools,” Grubb recalled. “Then John Stiegelmeier at South Dakota State tells me, ‘The best thing you can do is go back to school and be a grad assistant. If you want to coach after that, you’ll have a path. And if not, you’ve got a lifetime career because you have your masters.’ So I get a GA job there and I’m losing money but it was amazing. That two years got me hook, line and sinker.”
Sixteen years later, after two NAIA national championships at Sioux Falls and program rebuilds at Eastern Michigan and Fresno State — all with DeBoer — Grubb found himself in Seattle, touring the Huskies’ facilities.
Before the trip, Grubb had come up with an annual salary he felt was in line with what other top Power Five assistants made: $1 million. Wife Stephanie thought he was nuts. When she met her husband, he was working at Eastern Michigan, where he made $85,000 coaching the offensive line.
“You’re an idiot,” she told him before their trip to UW. “Now everybody is going to be attacking you. They’re gonna hate you if you mess up and make that much!”
Grubb’s wise response: “Babe, they’re gonna hate me if I made a bad third-and-seven call whether I’m making $600,000 or $1 million.”
DeBoer hired Grubb. Then the Huskies led the nation in both passing offense (369.8 yards per game) and third-down conversion rate (57%), finishing second in total offense (515.8). The season before, in 2021, UW ranked 73rd, 26th and 114th in those categories, respectively. Along the way, Michael Penix Jr. broke Washington’s single-season passing record (4,641 yards) and finished eighth in Heisman voting.
After winning season, Alabama, Texas A&M show interest
In the transfer portal era, college football’s offseason has become more crucial than ever, as coaches try to lure top playmakers to their programs, hungry for any advantage they can get in the quest for a national championship. But in an offseason full of acquisitions, Grubb had arguably the biggest score of all.
It started Nov. 10, 2022, with Grubb inking a raise that took him from $1 million to $1.45 million; at the time UW was 7-2. Just five weeks later, after the Huskies finished 11-2 — a seven-game improvement from 2021 — Grubb got another substantial raise (from $1.45 million to $2 million) when Texas A&M expressed interest in hiring him for its offensive coordinator opening. He could also earn an additional $100,000 this season in bonuses.
In late January, Grubb met with Saban in Alabama. Had Grubb taken the job, he might have had to take a pay cut, too: previous offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien made $1.1 million per season in two years in Tuscaloosa.
No UW administrators involved in the negotiation of Grubb’s hefty pay increases were available to speak with USA TODAY Sports. In August, athletic director Jen Cohen left Washington for the same position at USC. Deputy athletic director Jay Hilbrands, who oversaw Husky football, went with her. Through a USC spokesperson, both Cohen and Hilbrands declined to comment.
Undoubtedly adding awkwardness to the whole situation is the fact that after Grubb and the UW offense torched Cohen’s new school for 572 yards in UW’s 52-42 win at USC on Nov. 5, Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley finally fired embattled defensive coordinator Alex Grinch.
‘Being a coach, it’s a lifestyle’
There are positives, of course, to a big bump in pay. This offseason, Grubb took his wife, daughter and mother-in-law to Hawaii and stayed at the Disney resort, delighting 5-year-old Falynn.
“Let me tell you, Walt Disney is the original gangster, that place was incredible,” Grubb said. “And I do think about, if I was a high school football coach, how would I do that? How are those (types of vacations) possible on a high school coaching salary?”
It’s true that if Grubb were an hourly employee, he wouldn’t make as much as most think. His job demands long days year-round, often pulling him away from his family. And when young coaches ask if they should get into the profession, he’s honest about the tradeoffs.
“You have to have the right mindset and the right person to share this with. You can’t say you’re going to be the same dad and husband as the guy working 9-5 at Progressive insurance,” Grubb said. “Being a coach, it’s a lifestyle.”
He’s sometimes embarrassed by his salary, especially because “I think of some guys that I consider to be really good coaches coaching at small college or high school, they’re not making near that.” He’s humbled by the fact that he has both wealth and the privilege of being able to dedicate his life to his passion.
“It’s astounding, when we travel, the amount of money and people who are in the stadium helping us, who make sure we’re always ready to go,” Grubb said. “Because of that, the amount of time I have to allocate to my craft, to get better at my job, it’s just amazing.”
Also, he promises that crazy paychecks aside, if you met him on the street you’d have no idea he’s a millionaire.
“My wife is always pointing out that I’ve got holes in my Adidas shoes and wear too many worn-out sweatpants,” he said, laughing. “Really, not much has changed for me.”
Follow Lindsay Schnell on social media @Lindsay_Schnell and Steve Berkowitz @ByBerkowitz
