There was a time not so long ago when most of college football's head coaches would covet the deal Tennessee laid on its new defensive coordinator, Monte Kiffin, who this season gets a $1.2 million salary, a $300,000 bonus for staying through the end of the regular season, up to another $100,000 in incentives and the use of two cars.

It's the richest but far from the only lucrative arrangement for an assistant, USA TODAY found in the first comprehensive, school-by-school and coach-by-coach look at pay for entire football staffs in the NCAA's top-level Football Bowl Subdivision.

Five universities are paying their assistants an average of more than $300,000 this year. Three are in the cash-rich Southeastern Conference: LSU, Alabama and Tennessee.

Beyond Kiffin, a former NFL assistant hired by his son, Lane, four other assistants are guaranteed at least $600,000 this year: Texas' Will Muschamp ($900,000), Tennessee's Ed Orgeron ($650,000), Florida State's Jimbo Fisher ($629,000) and Washington's Nick Holt ($600,000).

More than 100 of the 893 assistants for whom USA TODAY was able to obtain contract or other compensation information are making $250,000 or more. One in four have multiyear contracts, including half a dozen with five-year deals as schools often at the behest of head coaches move to keep them content and in place.

"You ask any football coach who has his wits about him, any head coach," California athletics director Sandy Barbour says, "and he'll tell you the key to success is continuity and consistency in his staff."