BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football’s returning quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri and new director of athletic performance Tyson Brown have each signed multi-year memorandum of understandings with starting salaries that highlight the program’s growing assistant coach salary pool.
The university provided The Herald-Times with copies of the MOUs in response to an open-records request.
Sunseri signed a two-year contract as the team’s quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator with a salary of $650,000 in year one and $900,000 in year two. He will receive $400,000 in base salary and the remainder is designated as outside marketing and promotional income.
It’s the same title Sunseri had on IU’s staff in 2024 when he was one of the first assistants Cignetti hired over from James Madison. He had a salary of $540,000 that season and would have been in line for a raise had he stayed with the program.
Sunseri accepted a position as UCLA’s offensive coordinator, but parted ways with the school in the wake of head coach DeShaun Foster being fired in the month of September.
Last year, IU co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Chandler Whitmer made $750,000. Whitmer reached an agreement in January to become the Tampa Bay Buccaneers new quarterback coach.
Brown agreed to a three-year contract that runs through Jan. 15, 2029. He will make $800,000 in the first year of the deal ($400,000 base salary) and receive a raise of $25,000 per year in additional outside marketing and promotional income.
He will make slightly less than his predecessor Derek Owings ($925,000), but the contract is the same length as the one Owings signed in May 2025 and still at the high-end nationally for strength coaches, per USA Today’s coaching salary database.
Owings, who left for Tennessee, received a raise twice in the span of less than six months with USC pursuing him for an opening on their staff after spring practice wrapped up last year.
Sunseri’s and Brown’s bonus structure is identical to the one laid out in the round of contracts IU’s assistant coaches signed during the program’s run to the 2024 College Football Playoff. They can earn upwards of 50% their base salary in bonus payments for the team’s highest finish.
Their deals are fully guaranteed for termination without cause and they include buyout protections for the university if either assistant leaves for another job.
Indiana is expected to sign the rest of the returning staff to new deals in the coming weeks. The school already finalized new three-year contracts to retain defensive coordinator Bryant Haines and offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan that make them among the highest paid assistants at their respective positions.
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Contract details for Indiana football’s staff additions for 2026
Reporting by Michael Niziolek, The Herald-Times / The Herald-Times
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