Tanner explains fan reaction to retaining Muschamp, details why coach contract changed
To hear Ray Tanner tell it, he’s been hearing from South Carolina football fans since it became clear he would retain football coach Will Muschamp for the 2020 season.
And most of the reaction he’s heard was positive, USC’s athletics director said.
“Very positive,” Tanner said. “I think it’s only fair that you would say, yeah, there’s a few negative people out there. But I think that it’s been recognized from the time that he’s been here what he puts into this program. I had a lot of people reach out to me before there was any conversation that, ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking, but don’t make any moves. He’s a great man and he’s going to be very successful here.’
“I would say the overwhelming (majority) was positive.”
USC is coming off a 4-8 season, the program’s second worst since 1999. The performance led to a change at offensive coordinator and strength coach.
That added $725,000 to the staff salary base this season, between replacing Dan Werner with Mike Bobo, giving Thomas Brown a raise and hiring Paul Jackson to replace Jeff Dillman. Tanner confirmed former offensive coordinator Bryan McClendon — still USC’s receivers coach — will stay at his $1 million salary for the foreseeable future.
The AD said the idea for Brown’s raise and corresponding rollback of Muschamp’s annual raises (which took $3 million off the life of his contract) came from Muschamp. Tanner said Muschamp wanted the raise for his running backs coach, but understood raises don’t come after 4-8 seasons.
“I know we won four games and because of that, here’s what I’d like to do to compensate for that amount of money,” Tanner said Muschamp told him.
USC projects to again top $5 million in combined assistant coach salaries in 2020. Looking ahead to the year after, multi-year contracts mean five assistants and a strength coach are on the books for $4.75 million.
Tanner made a point to say he and Muschamp are in constant communication, often about the on-field product, but also about off-field questions such as marketing, compliance and business office questions.
The two also have on the books an end-of-year review meeting, something standard for all coaches. Tanner said the message from both sides is that South Carolina is a better program than one that should only win four games, and that at least is understood.
“We haven’t had our formal end-of-year evaluation,” Tanner said. “I said on a number of occasions we have a protocol that we go through that is football-related but also non-football. It’s about marketing. It’s about compliance. It’s about the business office.
“It’s a very thorough end-of-the-year review. I don’t think our coaches are all that excited about it sometimes.”
