March Madness: College Basketball Coaches Paid by Your Donations
by Andrew Heck, Charity Navigator
March 6, 2007
College sports fans look forward to the month of March for one reason: the NCAA basketball championship tournament. Soon, college campuses will be abuzz with face-painted masses ready to cheer on their teams, while even the most casual fans will be working away on their office-pool bracket.
For college basketball teams, one of the key elements to March success is a great coach, who can recruit and motivate his players to success. Just like in professional sports, many colleges will pay a premium to hire and retain successful coaches. One fundamental difference between professional coaches and college coaches is that while the salary of NBA coaches is paid for by billionaire team owners such as Mark Cuban, college coaches are paid by either your tax dollars (in the case of state schools) or your tax-deductible private charitable contributions (in the case of private schools).
Many of the private colleges and universities rated by Charity Navigator, such as Georgetown, Syracuse, Marquette, and Duke, are known for their NCAA tournament success, and, as such, reward their coaches for that success. In the table below you can see the pay for the 20 active private college and university men's basketball coaches whose pay is listed on the schools' IRS Form 990[1], along with their win-loss records[2] and links to each school's Charity Navigator ratings page.
Many of these coaches total compensation is considerably more when combined with sources of revenue such as shoe contracts, youth camps and clinics, endorsements, speeches, and other appearances. The salary listed in the table below, however, is what is paid by tax-exempt charitable entities, funded in large part by your donations.
Here are some interesting facts:
- The coach with the best record, Duke University 's Mike Krzyzewski, is not the highest paid. Both Marquette coach Tom Crean and Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings earn more from their respective universities.
- The greatest gap between performance and pay seems to be at Northwestern University , where Bill Carmody's annual compensation of $1.1 million lands him at number four on the list despite amassing only 95 wins and 111 losses in seven seasons as head coach.
- While John Thompson, III earns $449,054 as head coach at Georgetown, his father, former head coach John Thompson, Jr., earns $412,121 as "Special Assistant to the President" at Georgetown.
- In what can be seen as a victory for Title IX, while Baylor University men's basketball coach Scott Drew is number ten on the list with a salary of $413,612, Baylor women's basketball head coach Kim Mulkey earns quite a bit more, with an annual salary of $654,290 in the most recent fiscal year.
| School | Coach | Salary | W-L | Pct |
| Marquette University | Tom Crean | $1,655,819 | 163-84 | .660 |
| Vanderbilt University | Kevin Stallings | $1,339,643 | 142-105 | .575 |
| Duke University | Mike Krzyzewski | $1,200,000 | 702-199 | .779 |
| Northwestern University | Bill Carmody | $1,132,965 | 95-111 | .461 |
| Creighton University | Dana Altman | $937,714 | 257-140 | .647 |
| Boston College | Al Skinner | $592,093 | 194-117 | .624 |
| University of Dayton | Brian Gregory | $484,342 | 73-48 | .603 |
| University of Notre Dame | Mike Brey | $467,203 | 140-76 | .648 |
| Georgetown University | John Thompson, III | $449,054 | 132-71 | .650 |
| Baylor University | Scott Drew | $413,612 | 34-67 | .337 |
| Texas Christian University | Neil Dougherty | $379,487 | 65-80 | .448 |
| Syracuse University | Jim Boeheim | $377,387 | 724-249 | .744 |
| George Washington University | Karl Hobbs | $351,455 | 110-64 | .632 |
| DePaul University | Jerry Wainwright | $300,000 | 29-27 | .518 |
| Fordham University | Dereck Whittenburg | $264,043 | 35-54 | .393 |
| American University | Jeff Jones | $248,360 | 103-100 | .507 |
| University of the Pacific | Bob Thomason | $225,699 | 321-238 | .574 |
| University of Detroit Mercy | Perry Watson | $217,444 | 254-175 | .592 |
| University of San Francisco | Jessie Evans | $200,945 | 41-48 | .461 |
| Valparaiso University | Homer Drew | $169,462 | 302-239 | .558 |
[1] For the most current year available
[2] As of 3/2/2007
