Introducing the Mid-Major Madness Coaching Contract Database

College basketball is one of the biggest entertainment businesses in America. Head coaches are one of the top expenses at mid-major schools. That is why we are happy to announce the Mid-Major Madness Contract Database, which explains nearly $41 million in college basketball contracts.

VIEW THE DATABASE HERE

How We Got All of These

Earlier this offseason we set out to acquire as many coaching contracts as we could through state Freedom of Information requests. Over the past four months, we filed 171 requests and ended up receiving a contract from 149 schools. (For more on the outstanding 22 please see the end of this post). For private institutions, we searched for media reports, but it’s rare to find explicitly stated coach salaries for those schools.

We then went through each of the contracts and pulled out the Base Salary that is explicitly stated in each contract. The reason we used Base Salary is that it is consistent across every head coaching contract. Many contracts, though, including ones for mid-major coaches, include additional guarantees for media appearances, public speaking, or through guarantee game revenue. We tried to highlight these additional sources of guaranteed compensation in the Notable Bonuses section of the table.

Two pieces of the guaranteed compensation that we did not highlight in the Notable Bonuses section are the allowances that schools give coaches for vehicles and cell phones. Both are necessary pieces of any coach’s employment, so it makes sense that they would be included in the contracts. The car allowances are usually around $500 to $1,000 per month, though there are exceptions. The phone allowances, anecdotally, seemed to be less than $1,000 per year. Also note that most contracts include bonuses for appearing in the NCAA Tournament or NIT, winning the conference championship (both regular season and tournament), and having strong academic performance (and an APR that keeps the school eligible for postseason play). We haven’t highlighted any of these bonuses either because of how often they appear in most contracts.

In addition to compensation, contracts include buyouts, both on the team and coach side. These clauses are the bread and butter of the coaching carousel each April, especially for successful mid-major programs. But, because of how complicated they are, we have not moved any of those clauses into the overall spreadsheet.

What you can do is follow the links provided in the Source column of the spreadsheet where you’ll be able to see the contract in its entirety, as it was received by Mid-Major Madness in response to our Freedom of Information request. Some of the documents we received weren’t actually contracts, but letters of intent that were signed by incoming head coaches for the 2019-20 season. Contracts can change rapidly, so please consider this document set to be official as of before the 2019-20 season.

The coaching contracts we received also help demonstrate a school’s expectations and commitment to its men’s basketball program. Most head coaching contracts outline not just what the coach will receive, but his ability to pay assistants, host summer camps, the required guarantee games, and what postseason appearances are worthy of bonuses.

In addition, here are some of the most notable clauses we found while reading more than 170 mid-major head coaching contracts.

Putting Butts In The Seats

One of the reasons schools are paying coaches so much is to convince fans to come see their men’s basketball teams play. This is spelled out even more explicitly in some of the attendance incentives that head coaches are given. All of the notes below are according to the NCAA’s official attendance report.

• Eastern Kentucky’s A.W. Hamilton receives $5,000 if 2,500 season tickets are sold and $5,000 more if that number reaches 3,000.
• Dave Paulsen receives $5,000 if more than 4,500 fans attend each George Mason home game. The Patriots only drew 4,335 fans per game in 2019-20.
• If Missouri State’s attendance is at least 8,000 per game then Dana Ford receives a $10,000 bonus. (The Bears only drew 5,500 fans per game to JQH Arena.)
• URI’s David Cox receives $10,000 if the Rams earn more than $1,100,000 in gross ticket revenue from the team’s home games.
• Southern Illinois’s Bryan Mullins receives $5,000 everytime the Salukis sell out SIU Arena.
• UNCW’s C.B. McGrath receives 20 percent of season ticket revenue above $250,000.
• Utah Valley’s Mark Madsen has incentives not only for total attendance, but also student attendance. If 3,000 students attend a game then Madsen receives a $5,000 bonus.
• UTSA’s Steve Henson receives $5,000 if student attendance is greater than 500 per game.
• UTEP’s Rodney Terry receives one week’s salary if season ticket sales increases by 20 percent year-over-year.
• Western Kentucky’s Rick Stansbury receives 50 percent of all gross ticket revenues exceeding $800,000.
• Pat Kelsey receives $1 for each men’s home basketball ticket sold above 11,151. The bonus is capped at $10,000. Kelsey probably received that entire bonus in 2018-19, as Winthrop had a home attendance of 25,785 last season.

Who You Beat Matters

Winning matters, a lot. But so does who you beat. A number of mid-major coaches receive additional compensation for pulling an upset against a Power 5 opponent (and sometimes teams from the Big East or American Athletic Conference). Some coaches, though, have much more specific clauses. For instance:

• Kent State’s Rob Senderoff receives $5,000 for beating one of the following programs each season: Cincinnati, Dayton, Memphis, UConn, or VCU. The Golden Flashes are not currently scheduled to play any of those teams this season.
• New Mexico State’s Chris Jans receives $5,000 for beating New Mexico, UTEP or a Power 5 school. The Aggies play at UTEP on Nov. 12 and play a home-and-home with New Mexico on Nov. 21 and Dec. 14. NMSU also plays at Arizona (Nov. 17), Washington St. (Dec. 7) and Mississippi St. (Dec. 22).
• Prairie View A&M’s Byron Smith receives $2,500 for a regular season victory over SWAC rival Texas Southern. The two teams play on Jan. 11 and Feb. 8 this season.
• Mike Jones can be awarded $1,750 for “each Radford University win over major opponents not in its conference.” The contract notes Virginia, Virginia Tech, or “other ACC teams and top opponents from power conferences.” It seems like maybe the games at Northwestern (Nov. 19) and Mississippi St. (Dec. 18) might qualify this season.
• Southern Utah’s Todd Simon receives $2,500 for beating BYU, Utah or UNLV. The Thunderbirds get a shot at the Cougars on Nov. 13.
• Utah State’s Craig Smith receives $5,000 for beating either BYU or Utah. The Aggies play the Cougars on Dec. 14.
• UVU’s Madsen receives $5,000 for winning a buy game against an out-of-state opponent. The Wolverines play at Kentucky this season, but KenPom gives them just a 1 percent chance of victory.
• By Sept. 1, the UMass athletic director has to pick five opponents for head coach Matt McCall. If the Minutemen win those games, then McCall receives $2,500 for each victory.
• Milwaukee’s Pat Baldwin receives $2,000 for each win over a Top 50 RPI opponent.

The RPI Isn’t Dead Yet

As you can see in Balwin’s incentive above, the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) might’ve been phased out by the NCAA, but it lives on in coaching contracts that were signed before the NET replaced it this past season. Lots of coaches have bonuses tied to meeting certain RPI thresholds. The most generous one we saw was Rod Barnes, who receives $10,000 if Cal State Bakersfield finishes in the Top 250 of the RPI. The Roadrunners haven’t finished with an RPI outside of the Top 250 since the 2014-15 season. Southeast Missouri State’s Rick Ray has a similar clause, but the Redhawks missed even that low bar last season. Many, many other contracts still include the RPI in some capacity.

A Few Random Clauses

• Ron Sanchez at Charlotte doesn’t even have to beat a Power 5 team to receive a $5,000 bonus, he just has to convince them to come play a game at Halton Arena. He can receive the bonus twice per season, though only Wake Forest will be coming to Charlotte during the 2019-20 non-conference slate.
• Florida International’s Jeremy Ballard receives an additional $2,000 in compensation if he generates over $50,000 for the team according to the Athletics Business Office.
• New Mexico head coach Paul Weir is being reimbursed tuition, fees and the cost of books for finishing his PhD at New Mexico State University.
• All of the incentives for Northern Colorado’s Jeff Linder are academic based, except for drawing at least 120 paying teams to his offseason camp.
• If Northern Iowa’s Ben Jacobson is not among the top three highest paid coaches in the Missouri Valley in guaranteed compensation, he can renegotiate his contract.
• Portland State’s Barret Peery can be asked to make three promotional appearances for Nike.
• UMBC’s Ryan Odom receives $17,500 if the Retrievers play in the America East Tournament finals in an away gym.
• UT Martin’s Anthony Stewart receives an automatic four-year extension if he wins more than 50 percent of his games, finishes in the top four of the OVC standings, finishes in the top two in the OVC West standings, or makes the conference semifinals.
• Billy Wright’s contract with Western Illinois requires him to play a third guarantee game every other season in order to fund the salary for the team’s Director of Basketball Operations position.

The Ones That Got Away

We would love to continue building out this database! If you have information about a private school’s coaching contract please get in touch with either John Templon or Russell Steinberg.

We at Mid-Major Madness also believe that 22 more schools should’ve been able to provide us contracts through our Freedom of Information requests. Either through delays, ignorance, or outright rejection we haven’t received a contract from them. The list: Alabama State, South Alabama, Troy, Jacksonville State, Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Arkansas State, Central Arkansas, Little Rock, Delaware, Delaware State, Coppin State, Maryland Eastern Shore, Central Michigan (Note: CMU stated that Keno Davis was receiving a new contract and that accounted for the delay, but we have not seen that document yet), Alcorn State, Jackson State, Montana, The Citadel, Tennessee State, Air Force, Army, Navy, and Norfolk State.

You’ll notice that a number of those schools come from two states, Alabama and Arkansas. Both of them require the requester of public records to be a resident of the state. If you live in one of those two states and would like to try making requests we’d be happy to share advice.