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When was the last time New Mexico State football was featured on the front page of USA Today's sports section?

Well, it happened today.

The piece is about assistant coach Mike Rutenberg, who is profiled because he is the lowest paid assistant coach in major Division I football. You had to know the cover story in a national newspaper wouldn't show the Aggies in a great light.

Rutenberg makes $30,000 per year. He says he works 112 hours per week during the season -- that's 16 hours a day, with no days off -- so he makes about $5.15 per hour. I made more than that, per hour, pushing carts and cleaning bathrooms for Target 10 years ago.

USA Today analyzed salaries of head coaches and assistants for 98 of 120 FBS schools. The highest paid assistant is Monte Kiffin of Tennessee, who hauls in $1.2 million per year. It would take Rutenberg 40 years to make that much.

A more reasonable example ...

The highest paid Aggie assistants are Todd Littlejohn and Timm Rosenbach, who each have $70,000 per year contracts. The lowest paid Lobos assistants, Mike Degory and J.B. Gerald, make that much. And NMSU only has eight assistants, not the full nine allowed by the NCAA.

The USA Today story is also worth a click because of this database, which shows coaches salaries and has copies of head coaches contracts.

I checked out the contracts of Mike Locksley and NMSU's DeWayne Walker. Locksley will get $10,000 if UNM knocks off BYU this week because of an incentive he has to beat ranked teams. I know incentives like this are common, but, really do you need extra incentive to beat a ranked team? Too bad UNM couldn't slip in a clause that it would take some money back if the Lobos go 0-fer-12, which looks probable now.

Walker's lowest hanging incentive is a WAC championship, for which he'd get an additional $15,000. NMSU also included $50,000 bonuses for getting to the national title game and winning it. Locksley has no such incentive. But that might be a good thing. Doesn't that seem to be mocking?