Oregon State to pay Trent Bray $2 million per year

Last night, John Canzano shared some important salary information for new Oregon State head coach Trent Bray.

Bray, who has made the curious choice to not coach the team in their bowl game to instead focus on recruiting and hiring a staff, has a five-year deal that will pay him $2 million per year.

That salary is nearly $3 million less than what they were paying Jonathan Smith, who was in his sixth season building the program before he left for the head coaching job at Michigan State, where he's set to make well over $7 million per year.

To hire his staff, Oregon State is giving Bray the same amount they did his predecessor - $4.85 million, Canzano adds.

To put Bray's salary in perspective, the three lowest paid Power Five coaches were all guys promoted from interim head coach like Bray, and two of them were previously defensive coordinators.

Zach Arnett made $3 million as the head coach at Mississippi State last year and Brent Key made $2.8 million leading Georgia Tech.

Perhaps the best comparison is Washington State' Jake Dickert, who leads the only other remaining school in the dissolving Pac-12, and he made $2.7 million last year.

The argument could certainly be made that Wazzu and Oregon State are no longer "Power Five" programs moving forward since the Pac-12 is no longer, but that's an argument for another time.

The $2 million salary puts Bray just above UNLV's Barry Odom ($1.785 million), UConn's Jim Mora ($1.8 million) and Memphis' Ryan Silverfield ($1.9 million) and just below UCF's Gus Malzahn ($2.3 million) and San Jose State's Brent Brennan ($2.3 million).

A year ago, in early December when Bray's name would come up for various other job openings, he shared how money is not a motivator like it is for so many others

Here's that clip from December 9th, 2022.

"Money's not a motivator for me. I'm kind of motivated by success and then the quality of life and the opportunity here to be successful and keep it going is great."

Chosen to lead his alma mater now, he will have the chance to live that out as the Beavers and their neighbors at Washington State both embark in uncharted waters of the 2-Pac together, with the bulk of the rest of their schedule being filled thanks to a temporary partnership with Mountain West schools.

Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.

Update >> Steve Berkowitz adds that the MOU with Bray includes language that says "once a power 5/4 conference affiliation with football is established we will re-enter an exclusive negotiation period" where terms of the contract and pay will be further evaluated.