Doege will get a hefty raise at Arizona | Greg Hansen

New Arizona offensive coordinator Seth Doege was paid $265,000 last year for working the same position at Marshall, the No. 578 salary among FBS assistant coaches at public schools, according to USA Today’s sports data. How good (or bad) is that? The lowest-paid Arizona assistant coach, Brett Arce, was paid $300,000.

Arizona is likely to raise Doege’s salary to close to $750,000 or more. He will have far more incentive than his predecessor, Dino Babers, who accepted a $500,000 salary to be Arizona’s 2024 offensive coordinator a few weeks after being fired as Syracuse’s head coach and getting an estimated $10 million buyout. “Buyout Babers’’ was not the same young and aggressive Babers who was Arizona’s OC during its 12-1 season of 1998.

It’s the same thing that happened when Arizona hired Kevin Sumlin six weeks after Texas A&M bought out his contract for an estimated $12 million. Sumlin yawned through his three UA seasons.

Doege, 36, has more than paid his dues in football. This will be the job of his life (so far). If anybody will be motivated, it’ll be Doege.

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He missed his final two years of high school football in Texas with ACL tears to both knees. He sat on the bench his first three years as a Texas Tech QB, and then, in the coaching business, has jumped from Bowling Green, Ole Miss, USC and Marshall over the last seven seasons.

In the small world department, Doege is the second UA offensive coordinator who held the same job at Marshall. Really. In 1986, coming off an 8-3-1 season, UA coach Larry Smith hired ex-Marshall coach Chuck Stobart to be the OC for an Arizona team that would go 9-3 and beat ASU’s Rose Bowl team in the famous Chuck Cecil interception game.

If Doege can be anywhere near as effective as Stobart, this will be a good hire for Brent Brennan. Stobart went on to be the head coach at Toledo, Memphis and Utah. His best years, however, were probably when he helped Smith, then at USC, and QB Rodney Peete of Tucson go to the Rose Bowls of 1988 and 1989. Stobart died of cancer in Tucson in 2020.