Coaching Carousel Summary

I started wondering how the latest turns of the coaching carousel had effected salaries. While State is not shopping for a new coach this year (Thank God!), these new salaries will eventually impact State. How soon the impact hits will depend on average coaching salaries and the level of success State sees on the field/court.

For example, SIU raised Chris Lowery’s salary from $255k to $750k. In Wisconsion, they are wondering how much Bo Ryan’s success and the going rate for successful coaches is going to cost them. Here is their rundown on the top Big 10 coaching salaries:

– Tubby Smith: $1.75M at Minn
– John Beilen: $1.3M at Michigan
– Todd Lickliter: $1.2M at Iowa
– Thad Matta $1.75M at OSU
– Tom Izzo: $1.736M at Mich State
– Kelvin Sampson: $1.5M at Indiana

IIUC, these are the guaranteed figures and you can be sure most include incentives beyond this.

I was going to try and create some type of list of coaching moves and their new salaries from the various on-line article, but found a pretty neat little table from Louisville with the various moves through last Sunday. (Isn’t it nice when you find out that someone else has already invented the wheel that you were going to construct from scratch?)

Here are a few more new salaries that I found:

– Jeff Bzdelik, Colorada: $750k
– Stan Heath, South Florida, up to $4.275M over five years
– Jim Boylen, Utah: $575k
– Bob Huggins; WVU $800K (first year); $5M over five years

It would be about as silly to complain about salaries going up in a multi-billion dollar industry as it would to complain about the sun rising in the east. No, my point was simply to document what coaches around the country are getting….and remind everyone of how coaches are paid in general and specifically at NC State.

Everyone knows that a coaching contract is really only valid for two things: next year’s salary and the buyout terms. I hope that State is not in the market for a new revenue coach anytime soon….but it’s always good to keep an eye on the market value of something that you will need eventually.

About VaWolf82

Engineer living in Central Va. and senior curmudgeon amongst SFN authors One wife, two kids, one dog, four vehicles on insurance, and four phones on cell plan...looking forward to empty nest status. Graduated 1982

06-07 Basketball General NCS Basketball

61 Responses to Coaching Carousel Summary

  1. choppack1 04/10/2007 at 10:36 PM #

    I think Noah makes a good point in that V and the administration didn’t see that the “times they were a changin’.”

    One thing that hasn’t been mentioned. We didn’t really have an overly cooperative faculty. I don’t think the academic reputation of our athletes was that great before V. The athletic department didn’t start stressing graduation rates until it was too late. We still have problems w/ that although our academic controls have miles.

    At various times, I had classes w/ Chucky Brown (good attendance,participated in class appopriately), Kenny Poston, Brian D’Amico and Mickey Hinnant (football physics) – none of them stood out as terrible kids or students.

    I really think that V’s last couple of teams – w/ the exception of David Lee – were fairly incident free. For all of Washburn’s faults – he wasn’t a thug…a junkie, yes, but I didn’t hear about him being anything but a large kid.

    JimmyV – I remain convinced that if our administration had told V what they’d tolerate and what they wouldn’t, V would have been more successful. He deserved a shot.

    It seems to me like he’d been working a certain way and a group of people said, “You’ve got change.” Then they turned around and fired him in less than a year. I really believe we paid the price for those moves dearly – and I think the stress from everything probably contributed to V’s death.

  2. BoKnowsNCS71 04/11/2007 at 5:52 AM #

    Interesting but pertinent adjunct to my earlier comments about Coach K’s extracurricular activities in the N&O today http://www.newsobserver.com/122/story/562876.html

    Article starts from his taping of his weekly XM radio show. At least he is looking within.

  3. CaptainCraptacular 04/11/2007 at 10:34 AM #

    Really good stuff Noah, thanks for sharing this info.

  4. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 04/11/2007 at 11:07 AM #

    I think if a student is doing poorly it is because the student, professor and parents are not doing their jobs. This isn’t how the NCAA, the media and probably most people here view it but I think it is (or was during that time) absurd to blame the basketball coach because a student is doing poorly in video production class. To me that makes about as much sense as blaming the lunch room lady for the lawn not being in cut.

  5. noah 04/11/2007 at 11:15 AM #

    ” I just think his approach was a little naive.”

    ‘Willfully ignorant’ is how I’d phrase it.

    Chris Washburn going to NC State while V was the coach was about as poor a fit as you could imagine. Washburn didn’t need an absentee landlord, he didn’t need a tutor….there was something missing in the guy. There was some critical component that the rest of us got when we were growing up and he was sick that day and didn’t learn it.

    He needed to be sent to live with Trappist monks in Gethsemane or to a Sherpa in India and contemplate his navel and spend a year harvesting bulgar wheat and playing in a zen garden. He needed life skills that he just wasn’t going to get on a playground and he certainly wasn’t going to find them in the NBA.

    Washburn was a train that was GOING to crash. It just happened to be on our tracks.

  6. noah 04/11/2007 at 11:21 AM #

    “I think if a student is doing poorly it is because the student, professor and parents are not doing their jobs.”

    I agree. But it wasn’t a case of *A* student doing poorly. It was a case of damn near every student in our basketball program doing poorly. It was a case where we were bringing in too many people who had NO business in college. It was a case where we had a mechanism in place to keep these guys eligible…but not to actually move them towards a degree.

    Someone like Charles Shackleford could enroll at NC State and be placed in the 100 level classes. Every year, they could change their major and continue taking the same 100 level classes. Four years later, they’ve used up their eligibility and they’re still taking classes that a high school senior would recognize.

    We’ve got speech communications, we’ve got parks and tourism management…we’ve got our “Rocks for Jocks” classes. Is it really asking too much for people to make SOME progress towards a diploma?

  7. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 04/11/2007 at 12:20 PM #

    I remember either an interview or maybe it was in Valvano’s book where he listed what his players where doing. He had several playing pro ball some had graduated, some still in class and maybe a couple that owned their own business. Overall I would say they where a far more accomplished group than most NC State grads 4-8 years out from their freshman year.

    People can point out Wash and Shack and say they are what Valvano was about but many of us know better. I knew one of the ladies that tutored with Chris and Charles and it is really unfair to mention the two together. According to her (a teacher by profession) Charles worked really had and just couldn’t get it whereas Chris didn’t even try.

  8. noah 04/11/2007 at 1:14 PM #

    People point to Washburn and Shackleford because they are easy villains. Shackleford was a 6-9 walking malapropism and Washburn scored 490 on his SATs and stole a stereo. They might as well wear big black hats and twirl their moustache’s as they tie a pretty blonde to the railroad tracks.

    You don’t have to say anything else. You don’t have to explain them. “Washburn and Shackleford!” and everyone knows what you’re talking about.

    Neither Shackleford nor Washburn had any business enrolling at NC State. Just like Kenny Williams didn’t have any business enrolling at UNC (or Elizabeth City State, for that matter).

    Again…it’s NOT about one guy or two guys. It’s about 10 years of academic apathy. It’s about the administration never clarifying or quantifying what was acceptible and what wasn’t, it’s about V never taking in the whole Big Picture, it’s about the players never assuming personal responsibility, it’s about the faculty never putting in a structured program to get the players the academic support program they needed.

  9. BillyTheKid 04/11/2007 at 1:21 PM #

    malapropism….. heeeeeyy I learned a new word today, very nice. noah, thanks again for the great work and thank you SFN for letting noah talk about this.

  10. TNCSU 04/11/2007 at 2:01 PM #

    Good stuff, Noah. I, too, learned a new word!

  11. redfred2 04/12/2007 at 11:01 PM #

    So noah, not being a smartass here, just a thought, but are you saying that Jimmy V, the same coach that recruited Shackelford, or the malapropism, is the same man that the powers that be at NCSU, later asked to be THEIR Athletic Director? If you are saying that, what in the hell did that say about the leadership at NC State, and what was Jim Valvano’s perception of what was appropriate when he accepted the position?

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