A coaching reset usually brings excitement. Not for Oregon State. It has become a gut punch to the Wallet for the Beavers in the harsh new reality of the post–Pac-12 world.

After a brutal 0–7 start to the 2025 season, Oregon State fired Trent Bray and sought help from the SEC. They landed former Alabama co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard to take over and steady the program. However, that hire comes with a major bombshell.

Oregon State’s assistant coach salaries for 2026 are noticeably lower than in previous years, a clear sign of how the collapse of the old Pac-12 has hit the program’s revenue and spending power. The Beavers got their guy, but they’re doing it on a much tighter budget than before.

The program will pay the head coach just $1.6 million in 2026. Now imagine what that trickles down to for everyone working under him. For context, Trent Bray made $2 million per year on his five-year deal. During his tenure, Oregon State spent $4.85 million annually on assistant coaches in both 2024 and 2025.

Even last season, the Beavers shelled out around $3.75 million, and the year before that, $4.16 million. Under JaMarcus Shephard, that number has dropped sharply. Athletic director Scott Barnes confirmed the total assistant coach budget now sits at $3 million. Based on contracts finalized so far, OSU has committed just $2.56 million across 10 assistants.

That’s nearly half a million dollars short of the budget and a massive 47% drop compared to peak spending. The difference shows up fast. New offensive coordinator Mitch Dahlen, the first hire under Shephard, is the highest paid assistant at $400,000. Under Bray, offensive coordinator Ryan Gunderson pulled in $725,000 annually. So why the steep drop? It all traces back to the collapse of the Pac-12.

Losing ten member schools crushed media rights and conference revenue, and that hit Oregon State’s athletic budget hard. Not everyone in Corvallis was willing to accept the pay cut and made moves because of it.

Effects of paying less

Under JaMarcus Shephard, the budget squeeze showed up fast. Two assistant hires simply weren’t willing to work at those numbers. First was Lance Guidry, whom Oregon State announced as defensive coordinator/safeties coach on January 7, 2026. Less than a week later, he bolted for the same DC role at Memphis. Then there was Inoke Breckterfield, hired on December 17, 2025. He lasted under three weeks before leaving for the defensive ends coaching job at Utah.

That pretty much summed up the situation in Corvallis. With both salaries off the books, the Beavers now have about $1.06 million left to spend under its decided assistant-coach budget. Whether and when they replace Guidry and Breckterfield remains to be seen. The exits weren’t small, either. Breckterfield was set to earn $325,000, while Guidry was slated for $300,000 in 2026. He was also supposed to have a massive jump to $575,000 in his second year.

Those figures were second and third after Mitch Dahlen in the OSU assistants’ list. Shephard has since broken his silence on the exits

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“I want guys here who want to be here,” Shephard said. “That’s what I focus on, and making sure that I don’t lose the integrity of what was the whole intent of the guys that we’re gonna bring into this program. And it’s that they be elite human beings first. I’m not gonna bring people in this program that I feel like are gonna embarrass Oregon State, this staff, themselves or myself.”

The PAC-12, once known as the conference of champions is now a shell of itself, scrounging for scraps to keep itself together. The NIL infusion and the unholy marriage of private equity into college campuses has resulted in these changes. Some teams benefitted, while others like Oregon State ended up as the losers.