Bill Self of Kansas was the highest-paid men's basketball coach in the 2021-22 season, followed by Kentucky's John Calipari.
www.usatoday.com
In March of last season, Josh Pastner was the 37th highest paid coach in college basketball. That’s
WAAAYYYYYYYY higher than where Key ranks in college football when you consider how many more mid-major schools have very good and nationally relevant basketball programs compared to football. Yet, we aren’t even
close to being the 37th best college basketball team. I’m not even sure we’re the 137th best team. According to KenPom we’re 119th, and according to NET we’re 140th. That’s unacceptable for a program paying a 7th year coach as much as we are. Especially when you consider that coach has only been to 1 NCAAT in the flukiest fashion possible.
This myth some are trying to push about our finances being too far out of shape to yield an actual competitive basketball program is a joke. You know how much money separates Pastner at 37 from Juwan Howard at #20 in salary? $500,000. That’s it. Tony Bennett is making $648k more at #16 and has consistently put together one of the best teams in the country. The first coach(es) making $1M more than Pastner are Musselman at Arkansas and Buzz Williams at aTm who both make $4M per year compared to Pastner’s $3M.
UGA just signed Mike White to a deal worth ~$3.5M per year through 2029, and they have exponentially more resources to work with than we do. We are
not priced out of a top tier college basketball coach when looking at the market rate. But when we have even some of our most dedicated fans (the people on this board) willing to accept mediocrity for a seemingly unlimited amount of years, well then we’ll just continue to be mediocre.
GT basketball is a joke right now, and it doesn’t have to be that way.