Coaches' salaries soar to new heights

Those in top sports with top programs are earning in the millions.
By JOHN SHIPLEY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Tom Davis didn't go into coaching to get rich; it just happened that way.
"It probably was good timing, to some degree," the Drake men's basketball coach said.
Davis got his first big-time job at Boston College in 1977, just as college basketball was starting its climb into the entertainment stratosphere.
Soon after, BC became a charter member of the Big East Conference, became a regular on a fledgling sports network called ESPN and got one of Nike's first shoe contracts.
All of which helped Davis supplement and, eventually, greatly improve upon his starting salary of $12,500 a year.
By the time he briefly gave up coaching in 1999 -- after Iowa declined to renew his contract after 13 seasons with the Hawkeyes -- he was making about $420,000 a year.
Even that is out of step with what a men's basketball or football coach makes these days at a major NCAA Division I college. Minnesota's Dan Monson has a contract that will pay him $706,000 this season, and Tubby Smith is making a reported $2 million a year at Kentucky.
That's a long way from $12,500.
"It is eye-popping," Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said.
Climbing for a reason
But not out of order. Salaries for coaches for big-time programs are skyrocketing for a reason, said Delany and others who spend a lot of time examining college athletics.
The subject is particularly urgent at Minnesota, which is going through contentious negotiations to extend football coach Glen Mason's contract.
Through a variety of contract clauses, Mason made close to $1.5 million this season, and it's unlikely he would stick around for anything less.
And with one year left on his deal, Minnesota would have to buy out his final year if they can't agree to terms -- likely to the tune of an annuity worth nearly $2 million. That's before finding and paying his successor.
To succeed in big-time college sports, a school will do what it has to do.
"Nobody is holding a gun to the head of any university saying, 'You need to pay this person this amount,' " said John Fossum, a Minnesota business professor who studies compensation trends.
It's all about the market, Fossum said. The pool of coaches who can succeed at college football or basketball's highest level is small, just as the pool of potential corporate CEOs is small. And the impact a big-time sports program has on an institution is substantial.
Pay for all other programs
For one thing, football and men's basketball essentially pay for all of an athletics department's sports programs. Beyond that, much of a school's media exposure -- and, hence, identity -- is filtered through the football or basketball teams.
All of that has to be taken into account when assessing coaching salaries, said David Carter, a University of Southern California business professor who runs the school's Sports Business Institute.
"There's more to a salary than meets the eye," he said.
Take, for instance, Southern California football coach Pete Carroll, who has won two national titles and has the Trojans in this year's championship game against Texas.
Carroll's salary is undisclosed by the private school, but reportedly he is paid in the neighborhood of $3 million a year through a combination of salary and supplemental deals.
Coaches are salesmen
That's a lot of money, Carter said, "but he is arguably the highest-profile university employee. He's selling out our Coliseum; he's continuing to build an already strong brand with strong loyalty. When you look at that, you begin to understand that he's one of our best overall sales people.
"If a salesman at IBM or Coca-Cola were paid $2 million to $3 million, he or she would have to be bringing in tens of millions of dollars. Some coaches are, indeed, doing that, and not just in the revenue they generate."
The revenue alone is impressive. Minnesota, for instance, will make more than $6.1 million this school year from the Big Ten's television deal with ABC and ESPN. It will make nearly $2.3 million from the NCAA men's basketball tournament, and $1.93 million from bowl money earned by the Big Ten Conference's seven bowl teams.
That, obviously, goes a long way toward paying the budgets of Minnesota's 25 sports programs, only three of which make money -- football, men's basketball and men's hockey.
But can universities keep up with the inflation?
Minnesota athletics director Joel Maturi said the escalation "is a major issue in intercollegiate athletics. I don't think I've been to a meeting of athletic administrators where it hasn't been talked about."