FBS Coordinators Who Could Become Head Coaches Again: Bo Pelini

David Ching

Senior Contributor

SportsMoney

I write about trends in college athletics

May 27, 2020, 08:00am EDT

Former Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini will serve as defensive coordinator this season at LSU, where he coached from 2005-07. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Bo Pelini never won fewer than nine games in any of his seven seasons at Nebraska.

In the five seasons since his 2014 firing, the Cornhuskers have won more than six games once. They went from failing to win “the games that mattered most” – one of athletic director Shawn Eichorst’s stated reasons for firing Pelini – to failing to win many games at all.

Maybe this Pelini guy can coach a bit – and he’s adamant that he can still win consistently at the highest level.

“If somebody wants to win, they should call me,” Pelini said in a recently published profile in Sports Illustrated.

In the meantime, he is back coaching at college football’s highest level after a five-year stint coaching in his hometown at FCS-level Youngstown State. LSU coach Ed Orgeron pursued Pelini to fill his defensive coordinator vacancy when Dave Aranda bolted for a head coaching position at Baylor.

If Pelini, 52, produces the way he did in his first stint in Baton Rouge – as Les Miles’ defensive coordinator from 2005-07, Pelini led his units to top-three national finishes in total defense each year – he will get another opportunity to lead a program.

Sure, there will be questions about his fiery temperament, but coaches with worse behavior on their rap sheets have been given second chances at the FBS level. Pelini simply needs to get results in the SEC once again, whenever college football returns, and he will resume fielding head coaching offers. After all, the only FBS coaches to win at least nine games each year between 2008 and 2014, the years Pelini was Nebraska’s coach, were Pelini and Alabama’s Nick Saban.

Pelini is not the only former head coach who is in the middle of a redemption project at a major program. While his tour through the FCS was a bit unorthodox, it is not at all unusual to see a fired head coach serve his time as a coordinator, indicate he deserves another shot and then actually get one.

Think Lane Kiffin and Mike Locksley at Alabama. Or Karl Dorrell’s multiple stops between a 2003-07 stint at UCLA and his recent hiring as Colorado’s head coach. Or even Pelini’s current boss wandering through the wilderness between his 2007 ouster at Ole Miss and his becoming LSU’s coach, first on an interim basis and later as full-time head coach in 2016.

Back on the Bayou, an Unfiltered Bo Pelini Is Ready for His Second Act

Returning to college football’s big stage, Pelini speaks candidly on a perception he says is unfair and a future he believes is bright.

ROSS DELLENGER

MAY 21, 2020

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BATON ROUGE, La. — Bo Pelini is the last member of the LSU football team left in the school’s operations building. Across the street at Tiger Stadium, everyone else is feasting at the program’s annual pre-spring crawfish boil. That might appeal to some, but not Pelini, an Italian Midwesterner who much prefers red sauce over mud bugs. The crustaceans are too much work for too little payoff, he says.

Anyhow, he’s stuck in that office of his because an interview is running long, and he seems fine with it (whether that’s to avoid crawfish or not, who can say). The interview, in fact, is running so long that dusk approaches through the window over Pelini’s right shoulder, signaling the end of the final day before the reigning national champions begin spring practice. In an emblematic moment, the sun quite literally sets on the history-making 2019 Tigers, and it will rise hours later on a vastly different group (as it turns out, the coronavirus would shut down everything a week later). Three-fourths of LSU’s 2019 starters are gone, including 14 NFL draft picks; a handful of high-profile analysts left for full-time gigs; and two coordinators, Dave Aranda and Joe Brady, departed for big paydays.

There is a new but familiar face in these Cajun lands, and he’s sitting right here with a member of the media, a group that over the years, he feels, hasn’t treated him as kindly as he’d like—partially his own doing of course. From expletive-filled rants to explosive sideline exchanges, Pelini’s name for the vast majority of the college football public elicits an image of a snarling, red-faced man whose vocabulary is dependent on four-letter words. But there is no screaming during this interview. There is no yelling. There is no cussing. There is only Bo Pelini—misunderstood and mislabeled, he says—setting the record straight on the world’s perception of him and answering a couple of pointed questions: Why hasn’t a man with one of the best résumés of any fired college head coach gotten another big-time shot? And is he capable of doing it one day?

“I don’t think there’s any question I can,” Pelini says. “Everybody talks about wanting to win, but let’s face it, there are other things involved when these hires are made. I mean, there are always other agendas. I think sometimes people in college football are so concerned about the opening press conference that they forget: You better win football games.

“All the way back to when I was the defensive coordinator at Nebraska (in 2003), there was always an adjective in front of my name,” he continues. “The fiery Bo Pelini... the this Bo Pelini and that Bo Pelini. It got blown out of proportion. It was like every picture taken of me was me yelling at a ref. Most people never got to know what I stand for and who I really was.

“If somebody wants to win,” Pelini concludes, “they should call me.”

***

USA TODAY Sports

Back during Pelini’s first stint as LSU’s defensive coordinator, from 2005 through ’07, Gino Marino would encourage the coach to try something different when he ventured into Gino’s, a 54-year-old Italian restaurant in Baton Rouge. How about the veal parmigiana? What about the seafood cannelloni? But no, Pelini always said, he wanted his regular: Italian salad, spaghetti and meatballs with linked sausage and laurence bread.

Pelini dined at Gino’s a couple times a week back then. So naturally that’s where he ended up on his first night back in town this January. “He’s like a damn rock star now,” says Marino. “He comes in to eat and everybody comes and thanks him for coming back.”

Indeed, Bo is back on the bayou. As college football goes, Pelini has emerged from the shadows, stepping out of the FCS level and back onto one of football’s brightest stages—a place that originally launched his head coaching career 13 years ago, when his national championship-winning defense catapulted him to the gig at Nebraska.

This place, though, never really left him. He refers to Baton Rouge as his “second home,” likening its people to those in his native Ohio—blue-collar Catholics with a passion for football. He spent the last five years in Ohio as head coach at Youngstown State, a mission primarily to raise his children in his own hometown. His youngest daughter has just one more year of high school there, his son is in college at Notre Dame and his oldest daughter studies acting in Manhattan. He’s virtually an empty nester with his high school sweetheart, wife Mary Pat.

If Pelini’s coaching career were a game, this was the 52-year old’s halftime. Now, here’s the second act. The expectations are sky-high. “The LSU roster seems even better than the one he won the national championship with (in 2007),” says Joe Ganz, a longtime Pelini assistant who played for the coach and worked with him at Nebraska and Youngstown State. “Hopefully LSU continues to be as good as they’ve been, and he can get another crack at being a Power 5 head coach.”

The last time he sat in such a chair, Pelini coached Nebraska from 2008–2014, leading the program through an arduous transition from the Big 12 to the Big Ten while winning nine games a year. In those seven seasons, the Cornhuskers were 66–27, had zero losing seasons and never finished worse than third in their division. In five seasons since Pelini’s firing, the Cornhuskers are 28–34, have had four losing seasons and never have finished better than third in their division. He never lost more than four games, never won less than nine and his winning percentage (70.9%) is one of the best in FBS history among fired head coaches. In fact, during Pelini's seven seasons, only three FBS programs won at least nine games over that stretch: Alabama, Oregon and Nebraska. “Hopefully now people have some sense of appreciation for what we did there,” Pelini says, “because it’s not easy.”

In the last decade, plenty of head coaches have been fired with career records north of .500. Some are still searching for another FBS head gig. Among those, Bo Pelini’s winning percentage stands as the best. 

However, with Pelini, there is more to consider. He remains a polarizing figure at Nebraska. Few ride the fence. You like Bo or you don’t like Bo. The fan base is split on Pelini’s attitude—passionate vs. angry—and on his success—seven bowls vs. zero conference titles. In 2013, a rift began between the coach and fans when Deadspin published leaked audio—two years after it was recorded without the coach’s knowledge—that captured Pelini disparaging Cornhuskers fans for leaving a game early. One particular line stands out now given Nebraska’s position post-Pelini: “We’ll see what they can do when I’m f------ gone.”

Soon, a fissure developed too between Pelini and the Nebraska administration, led by new athletic director Shawn Eichorst. During a news conference in 2013, Pelini didn’t help matters when he challenged his own bosses to fire him. And then a year later, they did. After his firing, a second audio recording emerged, this one from Pelini’s private meeting with Nebraska players, where he was obscenely colorful in attacking Eichorst, who’d blocked him from saying farewell to his players on campus.

A column in the Lincoln Journal Star this spring suggested that Pelini was surreptitiously recorded behind closed doors by a rat, a plot at first to turn fans against him and then to smear him during his exit. “I’m not trying to go out of the way to defend him,” says Tom Osborne, the legendary Nebraska coach and athletic director who hired Pelini in 2007, “but those were two things where he didn’t openly come out in public and say things unseemly. Some people felt that they tried to make sure those (recordings) did not go unnoticed. For some people, it would have never gotten public.”

The leaked recordings, the sideline demeanor, the brash press conferences—they all helped to build an image of Pelini that Bleacher Report described thusly in a 2015 story: “He is a true rant specialist and one of the most bitter coaches around.” While Pelini is partially to blame for his own label, he contends that it is unfair. He vehemently defends his style, attributing it to a game-day passion that extends three decades back to his days as a free safety at Ohio State. He’s not the apologetic or regretful type. He stands firm on his approach, instead pointing the finger at a label based on a few sideline outbursts and a rocky final 18-month marriage with Nebraska. In short, “he’s not going to change,” says Ganz.

Greg Nelson/Sports Illustrated

And maybe he doesn’t need to. Pelini has his own suggestion on his image: Get to know his players and you get to know the real Bo Pelini—the motivational coach and teacher, not the screaming, fire-spitting sideline stalker. A half-dozen of his players rave about him—his passion, his intensity, his drive. One of those includes Taylor Martinez, the former Nebraska quarterback who Pelini famously blistered in a finger-pointing sideline episode caught on ESPN cameras during a 2010 game at Texas A&M. Reached earlier this month, Martinez says he’s long past the incident and calls the coach a “fatherly figure.”

Osborne says Pelini’s episode with Martinez—rampant then on television and in newspapers—painted a bullseye on the coach. He became the target, always the focus of television cameras. His outbursts, reactions and rants stole headlines. “Perception can become reality,” Pelini says. “I always say that people… you’ve got to get to know them. I think you can say that in so many areas of life. Sometimes I think people write things, say things and do things and they don’t really think of the ramifications of it. In this world, if something is written or said, it creates this persona that doesn’t go away. It’s something that’s always out there.”

Greg Shelley sees this in coaches across the country—their intense passion materializing into an unfavorable label. Shelley, a sports psychology professor at Ithaca College in New York and a graduate of Nebraska, has worked with dozens of FBS athletic programs in a consulting role. “With that passion and drive and fiery attitude, there’s a line, and when you cross it, all the sudden it’s a negative,” Shelley says. “For a lot of coaches, that’s a hard line to walk. It’s a hard line for all of us to walk.”

There are plenty of examples of a coach’s game-day passion crossing the line. Think of Bob Knight’s infamous chair toss in 1985 or Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly grappling with his own assistant strength coach during a sideline episode in 2015. Even the great ones have these moments. Former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes once drop kicked a sideline chair. Nick Saban, for all of his championships, has compiled an even more lengthy list of expletive-filled sideline clips. In a somewhat fitting twist, Pelini is now working for a man who rebounded from his own firing and rebuilt a public perception not unlike Pelini’s own.

Ed Orgeron is now a title-winning, baby-kissing genius who’s transformed into a public relations pleasure, a far cry from the failed Ole Miss coach who’d launch into Red Bull-fueled rages. Orgeron’s makeover began away from the field. As interim coach in 2016, he stopped driving his black Hummer, instead adopting a more sleek SUV. He began catering to media members and flourished on a number of public platforms, appearing in commercials with key political figures, retaining an active Twitter account and, through fiery locker room speeches, endearing himself to a fan base that at first resented his hire.

The real makeover took place on the field: He won a national championship. And so poof went the memories and images of the crazed Ole Miss coach.

Some inside the industry believe the Pelini-Orgeron marriage has the potential to be explosive—two hot-tempered, loud personalities both with expertise on defense. Carrie Cecil, one of the nation’s leading consultants for coaches on reputation and brand management, sees otherwise. She believes Pelini went to the right place to start his climb to another major head coaching gig. The LSU community, she says, will rally around a man with fiery passion and defensive prowess. “We all love a comeback story and great coaches are hard to come by,” Cecil says. “I’m excited to see how Coach Pelini starts to shift and shake off the negative stereotypes from the past, but he has to be an active participant in his own brand rescue to be a head coach again. And I think Coach Pelini will do that.”

Maybe that started back in his hometown. In five seasons at Youngstown State, no serious public incident arose off the field. On the field, the Penguins went 33–28 and advanced to the FCS championship game during Pelini’s second season. Ganz believes time at the lower level made Pelini a better coach—a humbling experience for sure. Accustomed to commodities of major college football, Pelini coached a team with 20 fewer scholarship players than he had at Nebraska, was forced to share a training room with other sports and had to maneuver around a budget a fraction of those at the FBS level.

But for Pelini specifically, the path back to the top may involve scrubbing that perceived image of a scowling, fire-spitting man. In this internet-centric world, that’s not so easy. Google Bo Pelini and of the first two dozen generated photos, six of them show the coach berating an official. Two show him smiling. “Bo is intense. No question he was somewhat volatile at times,” Osborne says, “but there were people who saw a different side of him. He could be the nicest guy in the world. If he let people see that side, it would work out differently for him.”

There are other things to consider, too. Pelini’s mad-man image spawned a host of memes on social media, including a popular parody account. The @FauxPelini Twitter account, with its 664,000 followers, has become popular enough that The Athletic, a subscription-based digital sports platform, has started publishing written works from the account’s operator. During that interview in his office, Pelini airs his grievances about someone using his name to fill the college football masses with satirical humor. “I think it’s ridiculous. There’s an example of somebody who sits behind his computer every day. It just sticks in my craw,” Pelini says. “I don’t think the guy means it that way. It’s funny and some people find it to be funny and I thought it was funny for a while, but after a while, it’s like, you know, I don’t find it funny.”

Pelini isn’t necessarily searching for his next big gig. He’s quite happy being back in the SEC manning a defense loaded with five-stars. In fact, the coach says he turned down 11 job offers during his time at Youngstown, but most if not all of them were college assistant jobs and NFL staff positions. Meanwhile, more than 55 head coaching jobs at the Power 5 level came open during that stretch. Head coaching hires run in cycles, says Gene DeFilippo, a former college administrator and the executive director of Turnkey Sports and Entertainment, one of the most widely used coaching search firms. For the last several years, DeFilippo says, the popular hire in the industry has been the young, smart offensive guru, but he senses that changing.

Lately, more experienced, once-fired head coaches are landing Power 5 jobs. He cites hires this cycle of Karl Dorrell (Colorado) and Greg Schiano (Rutgers), along with a slew of similar men hired over the last two years: Les Miles (Kansas), Mike Locksley (Maryland), Mack Brown (North Carolina) and Herm Edwards (Arizona State). “Bo Pelini will get another chance,” DeFilippo says.

At LSU, Pelini is beginning the process of putting talented pieces in the right places. Ganz describes this as having 10 ferraris in your garage and “you don’t know which one to take out,” he laughs. Pelini, of course, has experience in choosing correctly. His three defenses at LSU never ranked worse than third in the country and led the SEC in two of those three seasons. He’s overhauling a unit this offseason from a 3–4 to a 4–3, a transition that Orgeron compares to the offensive transformation the Tigers experienced last offseason with quarterback Joe Burrow and Brady, the wunderkind guru who left LSU to take the offensive coordinator job with the Carolina Panthers.

This is a point of contention in Baton Rouge. Orgeron expected Brady to remain on staff. The 30-year-old had even signed a memorandum of agreement, a document binding him to a contract with the school. But it also included a clause allowing him to leave for a college head coaching job or the pro ranks. A day after the national championship win over Clemson, Orgeron learned of Brady’s departure while on the 90-minute bus ride from the championship site, New Orleans, to Baton Rouge. “I found out from somebody else that it was going on,” Orgeron says in an interview in his office in March.

Aranda left days later to be the head coach at Baylor, for which Orgeron had in place a plan. In fact, Orgeron reached out to Pelini in December when Aranda was a top candidate for another head job, Utah State. A month later, Pelini’s phone buzzed with a second message from Orgeron, among others. “I didn’t even know (Aranda) was looking at the Baylor job and next thing I know, my phone is blowing up from people down here,” Pelini recalls. “Coach O texted about having a conversation. I mentioned it to my wife and she said, ‘You’re going to listen, aren’t you?’”

LSU athletic director Scott Woodward, a longtime acquaintance of Pelini, believes the Tigers' new defensive coordinator will take pressure and stress off of Orgeron. For one, Pelini is more of a disciplinarian than his predecessor. He also specializes in the defensive backfield and linebackers, leaving the defensive line for the expert himself, Orgeron. “The sky's the limit for Bo,” Woodward says of Pelini’s future, “but I think he’s content right now at being the head defensive coach in Baton Rouge. He has a great record and memories here.”

Indeed, this is a special place for the Pelinis. After all, to this day, the program continues a tradition Pelini started in 2005. Once a week during the football season, the coaching staff dines on Gino’s takeout. After Pelini left for Nebraska following the 2007 season, the ritual took a brief hiatus before then-coach Les Miles, superstitious as ever, phoned Gino himself to re-establish the tradition. The Tigers needed the red sauce.

“We didn’t have the spaghetti last week!” Gino remembers Miles yelling over the phone. “We almost got our ass beat!”

***

Pelini during his first stint with LSU in 2007.

Dale Zanine/USA TODAY Sports

The interview is winding down, finally. Pelini stares across his desk with that patented glare, the sun further dipping below his right shoulder and that crawfish boil across the street awaiting his entrance (they can wait). Talk of what he calls his unfair perception is over, replaced by a lighter topic: his basketball skills.

For years, Pelini led pickup games with staff members wherever he coached. These games got intense. That fiery Bo Pelini from the sideline appeared on the court. Those days are done. A back injury a few years ago sidelined him for good. He refuses to play, even though he acknowledges that he still could in a limited role. But that’s not Bo Pelini. He doesn’t present a limited version of himself—in coaching, in basketball and in life. Perception or not, you get the full Bo Pelini or you get nothing at all. “That,” Ganz says, “is just the way he’s wired.”

LSU Defensive Coordinator Bo Pelini Happy to Be Back in the Place He Calls a "Second Home"

Glen West

Mar 14, 2020

For five years, Youngstown State head coach Bo Pelini received countless job offers and inquiries but for five years he turned those opportunities away. As a native of Youngstown, Ohio, the attraction of being home made it very hard for another job to pull him away. 

"To be honest with you, I didn't take them to my wife, didn't even bring them up to her," Pelini said of the other job offers.

Then Ed Orgeron came calling.

"It was about 30 seconds and I looked at my wife and I was a little bit nervous," Pelini said with a slight chuckle. "I went up to her and I said 'hon, LSU wants to talk to me tomorrow about me going back there. I thought she was going to lay into me but she looked at me and said you're going to talk right?"

The only place that could beat home for Pelini was the opportunity to go back to the city and university he calls his second home.

"This place is special to me, I feel like this is my second home and to me it's about the culture," Pelini said. "Obviously coach O's culture and the culture here at LSU. The things he represents, that this program represents, the winning but just the culture of this state. I always felt at home here."

On Jan. 27, Pelini was hired as the Tigers next defensive coordinator, returning to that second home where he captured a national championship back in 2007. In his three-year first stint with the Tigers from 2005-07, Pelini constructed the No. 3 defense in 2005, No. 4 in 2006 and No. 17 defense in the championship season, allowing 288.8 yards per game.

"Bo was the only guy I ever talked to," Orgeron said Thursday night at the annual coaches clinic. "This is what Pete Carroll said about Bo Pelini, he said he's the most intelligent, best defensive mind of any coach I've ever coached with. That says a lot."

With Pelini on board, the Tigers have switched to the 4-3 defense Orgeron has envisioned for a while now. 

"Our players love it and it really fits the skill of our football team," Orgeron said. "They're playing fast, putting in blitzes and he's doing a tremendous job of energy and is already capturing our guys."

Pelini gave a short presentation to some 100 high school coaches in attendance as he put that defensive intelligence to work. He went down the list of his most important principles but the most important principle to have according to Pelini is having a sound philosophy. 

"Actually sitting down with your staff and asking the simple question, what do we want to be," Pelini said. "Whatever you come up with as a staff, it better match up."

The high school coaches in attendance intently listened as one of the great defensive minds in the game gave them some quick bullet points and film study. These are the coaches that will be one day handing off some of their special talents to LSU down the road.

Pelini has been in coaching for 29 years and coached at nine different universities and NFL teams. Yet through all of those years, all of those different experiences, Pelini considers the time he's spent in Baton Rouge as his fondest.

"I talk to a lot of people and they ask me  where the most special place where you worked and I say LSU," Pelini said. "The reason why that was is because the kids from Louisiana, they set the culture for the program. It doesn't matter how many kids you bring in from out of state because they all follow along with what the Louisiana kids are doing. To me, that's why this place is what it is and why I wanted to come back."

Beachwood-based agent Neil Cornrich's clients have struck plenty of new deals in 2020

KEVIN KLEPS  

Sports Business

March 19, 2020 12:34 PM | UPDATED 7 MINUTES AGO

Chris Gardner/Getty Images

Cleveland native Mel Tucker left Colorado for Michigan State, which will pay its new head football coach at least $5.5 million per year.

The start of the new league year in the NFL this week has brought the usual flurry of action to Neil Cornrich's schedule.

The first couple months of 2020, though, were a testament to the strength of another arm of the Beachwood-based agent's business: the myriad of college and NFL coaches he represents.

Last weekend, the Washington Redskins placed the franchise tag on guard Brandon Scherff. The move guarantees Scherff, the fifth overall selection in the 2015 draft, $15.03 million this season.

Two other Cornrich clients, center Austin Blythe and special teams standout Nate Ebner, agreed to one-year deals this week with the L.A. Rams and New York Giants, respectively. Blythe made $2.025 million with the Rams last season. Ebner spent the previous eight seasons in New England and just completed a two-year, $5 million deal.

Cornrich's clients in the coaching business have fared pretty well, too.

The biggest move in 2020 was Mel Tucker leaving Colorado to take over at Michigan State. Tucker more than doubled his salary when he landed a six-year deal that is worth more than $5.5 million annually. The Cleveland native will make at least $1.2 million more per year than Mark Dantonio, his predecessor at Michigan State.

Tucker's salary is expected to rank among the top 12 in college football. Sixteen head coaches made at least $5 million last year, according to USA Today's database.

Other notable deals involving Cornrich's clients in the pro and college ranks are as follows:

• Bo Pelini left Youngstown State, where he had been the head coach since 2015, to become the defensive coordinator at LSU. The Youngstown native is believed to be one of the two highest-paid defensive coordinators in college football after securing a three-year deal worth $2.3 million annually.

Pelini's salary was much lower at Youngstown State (in the $214,000 range), but until February 2019, he was owed $150,000 a month by Nebraska, which fired Pelini after a 9-3 regular season in 2014.

• Texas lured Mike Yurcich from Ohio State with a three-year deal that will pay the Longhorns' new offensive coordinator $1.7 million per year. The Euclid native nearly doubled his $950,000 salary at Ohio State, where he was the passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach.

At the time Yurcich signed his deal, he was the highest-paid offensive coordinator in college football. Prior to spending a year at Ohio State, Yurcich was the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State for six seasons.

• Tucker wanted to have Vince Marrow join his coaching staff at Michigan State, but the assistant stayed at Kentucky and was rewarded with a contract that will pay him $900,000 per year through 2022. Marrow, a Youngstown native, is the Wildcats' associate head coach, tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator.

• Jimmy Brumbaugh, who was a member of Tucker's staff at Colorado in 2019, is now Tennessee's co-defensive coordinator and defensive line coach. Brumbaugh will get $650,000 in each of the next two years.

• Bob Diaco left Louisiana Tech, where he was the defensive coordinator, to become the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Purdue. Diaco was Connecticut's head coach from 2014-16 and made a combined $1.7 million in 2017 and '18, when he was the highest-paid assistant in Nebraska history.

Cornrich also negotiated a few deals for NFL assistants this year.

• Josh Boyer, a former Kent State assistant, was promoted to defensive coordinator of the Miami Dolphins. Boyer was Miami's cornerbacks coach and defensive passing game coordinator in 2019.

• Darrin Simmons signed an extension with the Cincinnati Bengals, for whom he has worked since 2003. Simmons is the Bengals' assistant head coach and special teams coordinator.

• Phil Rauscher, after spending the last two years as a Washington Redskins assistant, is the Minnesota Vikings' new assistant offensive line coach.

Cornrich's most prominent client is Bill Belichick, who hasn't gotten a new deal but will have a new quarterback after the surprising exit of Tom Brady.

The longtime agent also represents Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel and Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz.

His player roster includes Trey Flowers, who struck it rich as a free agent in 2019, when he signed a five-year, $90 million contract with the Detroit Lions.

Bo Pelini back at LSU: See contract terms and where his pay ranks nationally

·         PUBLISHED JAN 27, 2020 AT 9:29 PM | UPDATED JAN 27, 2020 AT 9:47 PM

STAFF PHOTO BY MICHAEL DEMOCKER Saturday, December 1, 2007 LSU vs. Tennessee in SEC Championship LSU defensive coordinator, and new Nebraska head coach, Bo Pelini.

Michael DeMocker

Reigning national champion LSU is bringing back Bo Pelini as defensive coordinator, the position he held when the Tigers won a national championship in the 2007 season, and making him one of the country's highest-paid assistant coaches.

A source said Pelini agreed to a three-year contract worth $2.3 million per year, a figure just under the $2.5 million LSU was paying his predecessor, Dave Aranda, who left Baton Rouge to be the head coach at Baylor.

Such a payment would make Pelini the second highest-paid assistant in the nation, below Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, who just signed a new $2.5 million per year deal.

Clemson defensive coordinator, according to a USA Today database of assistant coach salaries in college football, ranks third by averaging $2.2 million per year in total pay.

Pelini originally signed a contract with Youngstown State in 2015 that paid him an average of $214,000 annually.

Pelini, whose hiring was announced by coach Ed Orgeron on Monday, replaces Dave Aranda, who left the Tigers to take over as Baylor's head coach after LSU's victory over Clemson in the College Football Playoff final in New Orleans earlier this month.

“We are privileged to have one of the top defensive coordinators in all of football in Bo Pelini join our staff,” Orgeron said. “Bo has had some of the best defenses in football during his career and we are looking forward to him bringing his tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise back to LSU.”

Pelini has spent the past five years as head coach at Youngstown State, which he coached to the Football Championship Subdivision national title game in 2016.

Pelini also spent seven years as Nebraska's head coach after leaving LSU.

"The opportunity to return to LSU is truly unique," Pelini said. “Culturally, with my prior experience at LSU, I know it is a great fit for me. The chance to work with coach Orgeron, the ability to take charge of the Tigers defense, is something that I'm extremely excited about. All of that in a place that both my family and I immensely enjoyed when we were there before is very exciting for us.”

During Pelini's three years as LSU defensive coordinator under then-coach Les Miles from 2005-07, the Tigers ranked third nationally on defense all three years. In two of those season, LSU ranked atop the Southeastern Conference in defense.

Pelini's LSU defenses averaged 38 sacks per season and created a total of 71 turnovers. NFL first-round draft picks Glenn Dorsey and LaRon Landry were part of those defenses.

Pelini was at Nebraska from 2008-2014, going 66-27 and winning at least nine games each season. While his tenure at Nebraska was generally successful and largely devoid of controversy, he once apologized publicly when audio surfaced of his profane rant against “fair-weather” fans.

Pelini's hire is pending approval from the LSU Board of Supervisors.

Staff writer Brooks Kubena and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

All signs point to Bo Pelini being next LSU defensive coordinator

By Zach Barnett

Jan 27, 2020, 2:02 PM EST

Bo Pelini (remember him?) is set to be the next LSU defensive coordinator, according to multiple reports on Monday, though FootballScoop was the first to report on the possibility a full week ago.

Pelini will return to a job he held from 2005-07, when he served as Les Miles’ first defensive coordinator in Baton Rouge and helped LSU win the 2007 national championship. From there, he became the head coach at Nebraska, where he went 66-27 in seven seasons.

Though he never brought a Big 12 or Big Ten title to Lincoln, Pelini’s Huskers teams joined only Alabama and Oregon in winning at least nine games each year from 2008-14. After being pushed out following the 2014 campaign, Pelini has spent the past five seasons as the head coach at Youngstown State, where he is 33-28.

The volcanic Pelini represents a stark departure from the stoic Dave Aranda, who left earlier this month to become the head coach at Baylor.

According to Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger, Pelini will make around $2 million a year, which represents a massive raise from his salary as an FCS head coach but a major savings for LSU, who paid Aranda a best-in-the-nation salary of $2.5 million. (Update: CFT has learned Pelini’s salary is likely to be closer to Aranda’s deal than previously reported.)

Though he’s spent the past 30 seasons in coaching, Pelini does not have a ton of experience as a coordinator. Aside from the three seasons in his first stint at LSU, Pelini spent just one season as the defensive coordinator at Nebraska (2003) and one as a co-coordinator at Oklahoma (2004).

Nevertheless, he takes over a defense that’s fresh off a national championship that both loses and returns a ton of talent. The Tigers will look to replace all four starting linebackers plus defensive ends Rashard Lawrence and Breiden Fehoko, safety Grant Delpit and cornerback Kristian Fulton, but the 2020 defense will be led by perhaps college football’s best defender in sophomore corner Derek Stingley plus safeties JaCoby Stevens and Kary Vincent, Jr.