Yes, it sucks to lose Gray. But it was inevitable to happen once Beamer retired. Gray had essentially been putting his career advancement on hold in favor of remaining at Virginia Tech to be the DBs coach for his old head coach. He could have moved on a half decade ago, but he chose to remain loyal to Beamer (and to a far lesser extent, Virginia Tech). Once Beamer left, Gray's primary reason for staying left. Gray is still young enough to become a DC soon and a HC a few years after. But he wasn't going to climb the ladder remaining here for 10 more years.

As far as the salaries are concerned, it's not a matter of Fuente's inferior assistants being paid better. Frankly, the guys who are being paid better deserve it. The funny thing is that one of the same posters who whined about the STs coach making $420K ($160K more than Gray) was ALSO saying that we need to bring in a coach with extensive SEC experience and recruiting ties. Well, Shibest is that new STs coach AND he spent 8 years at Arkansas and 4 years at Ole Miss (that's 12 years of SEC experience for those counting at home).

Brad Cornelsen at $450K is making a lot of money. He is also the Offensive Coordinator. Of course the Offensive Coordinator will make more than a position coach.

Galen Scott is making $308K ($48K more than Gray) as the DTs coach. However, he is ALSO the Assistant Head Coach and he is also a former Defensive Coordinator. Yes, he should get more money. Especially given that he made $306K last year.

Outside of that, the other newcomers (Wiggins and Vice) are making the same $260K that Gray would have been. But IMO, one of the reasons that Gray was set to make $260K is because it was known that Gray was going to be looking around and that he would almost certainly find something in the SEC or Big 10 making well over the $275K he made last year. Given that the contracts run through June anyway, Gray never took a pay cut in Blacksburg. He only knew that if he did stick around, he would make slightly less guaranteed money. He also knew that if we simply made a bowl that his bonuses would actually put him AHEAD of where he was last year. So the pay cut really isn't an issue. The real issue is that he was overdue to move on, and the one reason he had been sticking around (Beamer) was now gone. It is time for him to move ahead in his career. I hate to lose him. But this is the way college football works. The way we have had it for the last 15-20 years where we almost never had turnover from year to year for assistants just doesn't happen. It's time to get used to the way things work everywhere else in the world.

[Post edited by VTECHFAN at 02/04/2016 9:23PM]