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Shane Lyons remains busy, this time tinkering with the contracts of three assistant football coaches: Offensive line coach Ron Crook, defensive line coach Bruce Tall and first-season safeties coach Matt Caponi.

Just to get this out of the way, none of those gentlemen received an extension into a multi-year deal … even though former receivers coach Lonnie Galloway received one not long before he went to Louisville. At present, offensive coordinator Joe Wickline and defensive coordinator Tony Gibson are the only assistants covered for 2016 and 2017.

Crook’s salary remains $300,000, but the contract’s termination date was changed from Jan. 30 to Feb. 28, 2017, a matter of uniformity. His contract also now contains the “Termination for Convenience by University” clause Lyons has slipped into all contracts (except JaJuan Seider’s, though that’s probably just a matter of time, because he doesn’t have the Feb. 28 termination date, either).

Tall was given a raise from $250,000 to $300,000, and the termination date was changed to Feb. 28. Caponi, who signed his initial WVU contract Jan. 13, inked an amendment March 10, and his salary jumped from $200,000 to $225,000.

So that’s $75,000 in raises, half of that for an assistant who is new to the team. That’s business, though. Remember, things looked different just a few weeks ago. Galloway and Brian Mitchell were on the staff, and WVU was paying its assistants $3 million for the 2016 season, which was a clean and contractually obligated 5 percent raise. Galloway and Mitchell are gone, and Mitchell’s replacement, Blue Adams, is making $200,000, which is $75,000 less than Mitchell was making. Some money was available, and Gibson thinks Tall is as good as there is in the country.

WVU still needs a receivers coach to replace Galloway, and the eight assistants are making $2,650,000 at present. The new receivers coach won’t be making $350,000 to push the sum back to $3 million, so figure some more raises might be coming to the current assistants.