Report: Brent Venables to sign largest assistant coaching contract in college football history
Brent Venables will sign the largest contract for an assistant coach in college football history, according to a report from Yahoo's Pete Thamel.
According to the report, Venables's new deal will last five years and pay him a sum of $11.6 million. He will earn $2 million in salary per year and a total of $1.6 million in retention bonuses, to be paid in what Thamel describes as "essentially a life insurance investment policy," similar to what Jim Harbaugh has at Michigan. The bonuses will pay $200,000 in the first two years of the deal and $400,000 a year in the final three.
UPDATE >> The deal has since been announced.
While the new deal is the largest compensation package ever given to an assistant coach, it will not make him the highest-paid assistant in terms of annual salary. That honor still belongs to LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda, who in January agreed to a 4-year deal paying him $2.5 million a year.
Aranda and Venables were already the highest-paid assistants in the game last season. Aranda earned $1.8 million in 2017, slightly ahead of Venables's $1.7 million salary.
The new deal requires no buyout should Venables leave for a head coaching job, but requires him to pay back 25 percent of the remainder of the contract should he take another assistant job. Venables already has one son on Clemson's roster, and a second who is a high school junior that is being recruited by Clemson.
Venables has been Clemson's defensive coordinator since 2012. Over that time, Clemson has won double-digit games every season and 11 or more all but once. The Tigers are 40-4 with three ACC championships, three College Football Playoff appearances, two title game berths, one national title and three top-4 rankings over that span.
He was selected by his peers as the FootballScoop Defensive Coordinator of the Year in 2014 and won the Broyles Award in 2016.
Clemson finished last season ranked second nationally in yards per play (4.27) and scoring (13.6 points per game) and, thanks to returning a defensive line with four All-America candidates, enters 2018 as the co-favorite with defending champion Alabama to win the national title.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.
