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Scott Stricklin: Surging coordinator salaries create uncomfortable optics

In 1997, Steve Spurrier became the first $2 million head coach in college football.

A little more than 20 years later, LSU gave defensive coordinator Dave Aranda a four-year deal worth $2.5 million annually.

In Spurrier’s day, a $1 million dollar head coaching salary was a king’s ransom. Now it is becoming the cost of business to hire a top coordinator in the SEC.

Alabama pays both of its coordinators more than $1 million each.

“It’s what the market bears,” Crimson Tide athletic director Greg Byrne said Wednesday at the SEC Spring Meetings.