Colleghe basketball coaches Salaries

Loading …Calipari, Izzo are top-paid men’s hoops coaches

By Tom Van Riper, Forbes.com

Mar 4, 5:33 pm EST





tweet13EmailPrintJohn Calipari’s job isn’t easy. As head basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, he’s on the go constantly – glad-handing sponsors, mingling with alumni and dealing with the press. There’s also the grueling offseason recruiting circuit, all in addition to 30 or so games and countless practices during the year.



The upside: For his efforts, Calipari, who owns a .768 winning percentage and 11 NCAA tournament appearances at three schools, pulls in a cool $4 million a year, making him college basketball’s highest-paid coach. And that doesn’t include perks like a country club membership or that $3 million retention bonus waiting for him in 2016 if he’s still on the Kentucky sideline by the end of that season.



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In Pictures: The highest-paid college basketball coaches





At least 32 Division I basketball coaches earn more than a million dollars annually, according to USA Today, and that number can go higher as potential bonuses kick in. Following Calipari on the elite pay list: Michigan State’s Tom Izzo ($3.4 million a year), Florida’s Billy Donovan ($3.3 million) and Kansas’ Bill Self ($3 million).





Do they deserve it? It’s really all in how you look at it. A major basketball school will typically generate anywhere from $15 million to $40 million a year for its university. Handing over 5 percent to 10 percent of that to the guy running the program seems reasonable enough, until you consider that no other business pays a CEO so generously. Apple doesn’t pay Steve Jobs over a billion dollars a year. NBA coaches don’t take such big chunks of their teams’ cash flows either: The league’s highest-paid coach, Phil Jackson, rakes in less than 2 percent of the Los Angeles Lakers’ $600 million in annual revenue. And he works more than twice as many games as a college coach does.



Then again, maybe they simply “deserve” what the market bears. The market for top-notch college basketball coaches is hyper-competitive. Not only do big-time schools have to compete with the NBA, where Calipari and Rick Pitino (No. 5) have coached and where Izzo, Donovan and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (No. 6) have been wooed. But each offseason yields a very limited market of available coaches, driving up costs. Calipari had been doing quite well for himself at the University of Memphis, running a perennial power and making more than $2 million a year. To lure him away, Kentucky officials had little choice but to sweeten the pot.



Another price driver: There are only a handful of college jobs – Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke and a few others – viewed by the coaching fraternity as final destinations. With some notable exceptions – like the relatively underpaid Jim Calhoun of Connecticut ($1.6 million a year) and Jim Boeheim of Syracuse ($1.3 million) – coaches will jump from most jobs for the right price. “Schools will do what they can to entice their coaches to stay,” says Patrick Rishe, a professor of sports management at Webster University in St. Louis.



Unlike their pro counterparts, college coaches “are the stewards for these large cash cow programs,” says Rishe. Indeed, for long-term branding purposes, the face of a college basketball team is its coach. Not so in the pro ranks – as accomplished as Phil Jackson may be, Kobe Bryant is the face of the Lakers.



Those coaches getting top dollar have certainly earned their places among college basketball’s elite. Cumulatively the 10 highest-paid coaches have won 73.5 percent of their games and made 139 appearances in the NCAA tournament. Each of those appearances yields an average of $450,000 in additional alumni giving, according to Mark Yost, author of the book “Varsity Green,” which chronicles the business side of college sports. The group also has 11 national championships to its credit, led by Krzyzewski’s four. Seven figures for a basketball coach? Call it the cost of doing business.



The top five:



1. John Calipari, University of Kentucky: Slideshow

2. Tom Izzo, Michigan State University: Slideshow

3. Billy Donovan, University of Florida: Slideshow

4. Bill Self, University of Kansas: Slideshow

5. Thad Matta, Ohio State University: Slideshow

• See more coaches

In Pictures: The highest-paid college basketball coaches




Both conference tournaments could provide some intrigue early in March, according to Greg Anthony and Jason King.