Football’s assistant coaching staff is the highest-paid in the Big East and is pretty competitive nationally. This season, and for the first time ever, each assistant will make more than $200,000.

Despite the distinction, the Mountaineers have actually committed $50,000 less to their assistants than they did last season. Doc Holliday was making $400,000 and left that on the table when he left for Marshall. WVU hired Dave McMichael from UConn — where he was making $135,000 — at $200,000. Raises of $75,000 were given to Lonnie Galloway and Chris Beatty and bumped both to $200,000. WVU justified the raises for the purposes of “additional duties and critical retention.“

“Sometime coaches become hot commodities and obviously you want to retain them,” said Mike Parsons, WVU’s deputy athletic director.

Galloway and Beatty have had their names mentioned with open assistant coaching positions in each of the past two offseasons.

Beatty was promoted to assume Holliday’s role as recruiting coordinator and put in charge of recruiting Virginia and Washington, D.C. Galloway’s recruiting duties expanded to include North Carolina, Florida’s Palm Beach, Dade, Monroe, Broward and Martin counties and Georgia’s Florida, Fulton, Cobb and Dekalb counties.

Each was integral in helping assemble what Stewart said were WVU’s highest-ranked recruiting classes the past two years.

“I think it’s very head-smart by our administration and it tells the coaches, without a doubt, what the administration thinks of them,” Stewart said. “These guys are in a high-dollar profession and they’re making good money because they deserve to make good money.”

In all, the nine assistants are due $1.925 million. Bill Stewart’s $900,000 salary pushes the tab to $2.825 million. In 2007, the final year with former Coach Rich Rodriguez and his assistants on staff, WVU provided $3.018 million in salaries, including $1.235 million to the nine assistants.