Arizona football: Wildcats coordinators Calvin Magee and Marcel Yates receive unprecedented contracts

This could be hugely important moving forward.

On Friday, Arizona Wildcats offensive coordinator Calvin Magee and new defensive coordinator Marcel Yates had multi-year contracts approved by the Arizona Board of Regents.

So what's the big deal about this?

It's the first time in program history that an assistant coach has received a contract for longer than one fiscal year according to the Arizona Daily Star.

Policy 6-303 restricts the length of service professionals' contracts to one year, but Arizona asked the board to make an exception to that policy due to "multiyear appointments for football offensive and defensive coordinators are becoming common in the industry and are deemed necessary to maintain program competitiveness."

A few examples I found of other major schools doing this in the last two years include: Georgia, Michigan, and Texas.

Magee is set to receive a $20,000 increase in pay this year, bringing his yearly salary to $520,000. Yates will make $500,000 in his first year at Arizona. Compare that to the $670,000 that Jeff Casteel made last year. Arizona will also pay the $75,000 buyout from Boise State for Yates' services.

While finally offering multi-year contracts to assistant coaches, the pay is still a good chunk less than the schools I named above. The new Georgia coordinators will make upwards of $650,000/year. Michigan coordinators are making at least $700,000 a year, and the Texas coordinators are all making at least $575,000 a year.

So this move is certainly a step in the right direction for Arizona's ability to hire top-notch assistant coaches, but there is still more work to be done to bring this program to an elite level.

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