Back in the winter, WVU had to deal with five expiring contracts on its coaching staff, and Dana Holgorsen was adamant he needed those gentlemen back because he finally had some continuity within his reach. So in December JaJuan Seider, Lonnie Galloway and Brian Mitchell were given new deals. Shannon Dawson left for Kentucky, though surely he would have been retained as well, and Ron Crook, who had one more year left on his two-year deal, was given an additional year.

Seider, Mitchell and Crook got raises to $275,000 and Galloway remained at $300,000. In January, Joe DeForest, the fifth among the five with deals that were up, agreed to a one-year contract that saw him lose his title as associate head coach as well as a slice of his salary, one that dropped him from $500,000 to $325,000.

In March, WVU granted raises totaling $150,000 to DeForest, Galloway, Crook and Seider. The explanation? Holgorsen had money to spend and the right to use it.

Holgorsen still had one spot on his staff to fill and chose to hire Mark Scott, Gibson’s former graduate assistant, for one year and $150,000 to be a defense/special teams coach.

When Scott signed March 24, the combined salaries for the 2015 staff was $2.7 million. A clause in Holgorsen’s contract, signed in April 2012, sets an assistant coach salary budget of no less than $2.6 million that “shall increase not less than three percent.” In the years following a bowl game, the increase has to be at least five percent, and the Mountaineers lost the Liberty Bowl in December against Texas A&M.

WVU’s budget actually decreased by 7.6 percent. The 2014 salaries were 12.5 percent higher than they were in 2013.

“The salary pool is guaranteed to him based on his contract,” Lyons said. “Because he hired Coach Scott at such a low number — lower than he might have normally hired another coach who’d be coming in at maybe $250,000 — he had some extra money he felt under his contract he had the right to use to up the coaching salaries for the other assistants.

“That’s when he came to me and said, ‘I’m not paying Coach Scott as much as I was thinking I’d use hiring a new coach. I’d like to go back and use that money toward my other guys.’ I had no problem with that. That’s why it’s in his contract.”