New Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Nate Woody’s contract should be able to cover any cost-of-living increases in his move from Appalachian State in Boone, N.C., to Atlanta.
Woody is working on a two-year contract worth $1.175 million – $575,000 for the 2018 season and $600,000 for 2019. According to a USA Today database, Woody earned $223,063 last season as Appalachian State defensive coordinator, a job he held for five seasons. That’s a raise of 158 percent. Woody’s predecessor at Tech, Ted Roof, earned $800,000 last year before taking a job at N.C. State as co-defensive coordinator. Roof’s compensation in his first year back at Tech, in 2013, was $550,000.
Copies of Woody’s and defensive assistant coaches Jerome Riase and Shiel Wood’s contracts were obtained through an open-records request.
By ACC standards, Woody could prove a bargain. Last year, there were 11 assistant coaches in the ACC who earned more than $575,000, according to the USA Today report, and that doesn’t include coaches at the six league schools whose contracts were not subject to open-records requests.
Woody’s contract also includes bonuses for a bowl game, finishing in the top five in the ACC in scoring defense, red-zone touchdown percentage defense and takeaways per game, as well as for winning the ACC Coastal, the conference and for overall win total. The maximum he could receive through incentives is about $148,000.
Roof’s contract did not contain bonuses for division or conference championships or win totals, although it did have five statistically-based incentives, compared with Woody’s three.
The two assistants who joined Woody after previously serving at Wofford – Riase, the defensive line coach, and Wood, the safeties coach – both will earn $190,000 on one-year contracts, the standard length for Tech’s non-coordinator assistants. That places them near the bottom of the scale for coach Paul Johnson’s staff. Last season, quarterbacks and B-backs coach Craig Candeto was the low earner at $185,345.
Even with the increase in staff from nine assistants to 10, as permitted by the NCAA, Tech’s salary pool may dip slightly from last year, depending on the size of possible raises for the remaining staff. Riase will make $92,000 less than his predecessor, Mike Pelton, and Woody’s compensation is $225,000 less than Roof’s 2017 salary.
About the Author
