PISCATAWAY – Shane Burnham became a football coach the moment that he decided he would rather live in a hole than in a rut.
The former South Carolina linebacker spent his first season out of college as a NCAA-designated “restricted-earnings coach” at Richmond, where his salary in 1998 was about one-fifth of the starting pay for his former teammates who headed off to Wall Street.
“I was making $12,000 and living at the bottom of the basketball facility at Richmond,” Burnham told Gannett New Jersey. “I’m literally taking the stairs to work and living at the office.