March Madness 2008: College Basketball Coaches Paid by Your Donations
by Andrew Heck, Charity Navigator
March 1, 2008
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 18 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. As student education is integral to the mission of nonprofit colleges and universities, the chart below also includes the 2007 Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for each school’s men’s basketball program, as calculated by the NCAA.
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:
- With a GSR of 91%, University of Notre Dame coach Mike Brey graduates more of his players than any other coach on this list. However, his annual salary of $467,203 is lower than the $630,292 average salary of the nonprofit college and university coaches listed.
- 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 above-average annual compensation of $642,279 lands him at number six on the list despite amassing only 103 wins and suffering 131 losses in eight 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.
| School | Coach | Salary | W-L | Pct | GSR |
| Marquette University | Tom Crean | $1,655,819 | 186-92 | .669 | 89% |
| Vanderbilt University | Kevin Stallings | $1,339,643 | 168-112 | .600 | 83% |
| Duke University | Mike Krzyzewski | $1,200,000 | 798-264 | .751 | 67% |
| Syracuse University | Jim Boeheim | $955,000 | 767-275 | .736 | 67% |
| Creighton University | Dana Altman | $828,965 | 279-149 | .652 | 67% |
| Northwestern University | Bill Carmody | $642,279 | 103-131 | .440 | 89% |
| DePaul University | Jerry Wainwright | $593,933 | 42-45 | .483 | 36% |
| Boston College | Al Skinner | $592,093 | 209-133 | .611 | 64% |
| University of Dayton | Brian F. Gregory | $484,342 | 92-58 | .613 | 82% |
| University of Notre Dame | Mike Brey | $467,203 | 163-83 | .663 | 91% |
| Baylor University | Scott Drew | $413,612 | 75-77 | .493 | 58% |
| Georgetown University | John Thompson, III | $449,054 | 94-34 | .734 | 82% |
| The George Washington University | Karl Hobbs | $378,381 | 122-79 | .607 | 70% |
| Texas Christian University | Neil Dougherty | $379,487 | 74-104 | .416 | 35% |
| American University | Jeff Jones | $248,360 | 121-111 | .522 | 18% |
| University of the Pacific | Bob Thomason | $265,628 | 340-249 | .577 | 78% |
| Fordham University | Dereck Whittenburg | $264,043 | 46-67 | .407 | 71% |
| Valparaiso University | Homer Drew | $187,406 | 319-126 | .717 | 83% |
[1] For the most current year available
[2] As of 2/27/2008
