The Great Mid-Major Coaching Shift
Direct athlete pay changes everything: smart mid-majors will invest in rosters, not coaching resumes
The economics of college sports are wonky.
My mentor in law school once told me something that stuck with me:
“Working in college sports is like playing franchise mode in Madden. When it tells you how much profit you’ve made at the end of the season, it doesn’t matter. You can’t take it home.
So naturally, what do you do? You max out team spending, upgrade facilities, juice your coaching contracts, and build the new stadium. That’s college sports.”
In college athletics — especially at flagship public institutions — there is no concern about a return on investment.
Who owns the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Athletic Department?
It isn’t Athletic Director Josh Whitman.
It isn’t Chancellor Robert Jones.
It isn’t University President Timothy Killeen.
It’s the State of Illinois.
If Cowboys owner Jerry Jones builds a new stadium, the profits from ticket sales, naming rights, and luxury boxes flow directly back to him. In college sports, excess revenues either go back to the state or get reinvested. If you don’t spend it, you lose it.
As media rights exploded over the last decade, athletic departments — with relatively fixed costs — suddenly had to find new ways to spend big.
The following graphs show an inflation-adjusted financial landscape of the Big Ten Conference from 2005 to 2024. Throughout the 2010s, media rights skyrocketed across the entire sports landscape; in the Big Ten Conference, the inflation-adjusted media payout more than doubled between 2014 and 2024.
While media rights have been the primary driver, increases in revenue from ticket sales, sponsorships, licensing, and student fees also contributed to the surge in athletic department funds. Over the last 19 years, inflation-adjusted revenues within the Big Ten Conference rose by 140.52%.
So, what has this system created? Not richer owners and higher player salaries, like in the NFL, NBA, or MLB.
At the Power 4 level, we’ve seen these increased revenues reinvested into bloated administrative departments, inflated coaching salaries (and buyouts), and hundred-million-dollar football facilities.
At Illinois, basketball head coach Brad Underwood is set to make $4.8 million in the 2025-26 season, just a million shy of what Billy Donovan will make coaching the Bulls.
The Chicago Bulls generated $414 million in team revenue in the 2023-24 season.
Illinois men’s basketball brought in just $30.1 million that same year.
This isn’t to say Underwood isn’t one of the elite coaches in college basketball. He absolutely is. But it is fair to point out he is also the direct beneficiary of a system that, until this year, didn’t directly compensate on-court talent or have private ownership to siphon off excess revenues.
The good news for Brad Underwood, Bret Bielema — and the hundreds of other Power 4 revenue sport coaches — is that this windfall isn’t going away. The market for elite coaches is set. Schools that can comfortably hit the maximum direct revenue-sharing allotment will still pay big for coaches, who, without question, impact wins and program success.
In response to the added expense of the $20.5 million (and growing) cap for direct revenue-sharing payments to college athletes slated to begin this season, belt-tightening will happen at schools big and small. Even so, Power 4 programs will look for other places to trim expenses or generate new revenue before slashing coaching contracts.
At Oklahoma State, Mike Gundy agreed to restructure his contract, taking a $1 million pay cut, with the savings directed to the university’s revenue-sharing expenditures. Would that have happened if he weren’t coming off a three-win season? Probably not.
If Gundy finished the season with a bowl appearance, Oklahoma State would have likely found the money elsewhere: more sponsorships in their stadiums, “talent fees” on their tickets, or the elimination of athletic staff positions.
The calculus at mid-major institutions is fundamentally different from that of the well-endowed Power 4 schools.
To keep pace in the college basketball landscape, mid-major programs have felt compelled to offer lucrative contracts to their head coaches. Successful head coaches are always a flight risk to bigger programs, but now these deals have to be large enough to fend off Power 4 programs poaching them for assistant positions.
With more revenue than ever pouring into Power 4 athletics conferences, the biggest schools are offering assistant coach compensation packages that rival — or surpass — what many low-major head coaches make.
In today’s environment, a high-major assistant job is often far more secure than leading a less prestigious program. With vast resource disparities, being a head coach at a low- or mid-major institution can be stressful, as there are far fewer resources available to build and retain a competitive roster. Even with the perks of visibility, autonomy, and upward mobility, more coaches are opting to take stable, well-paid assistant roles on Power 4 staffs.
With the advent of the “general manager” title in college basketball, even more positions are available for current and former low and mid-major head coaches to jump into, and often get paid quite handsomely to do so.
Villanova’s GM, Baker Dunleavy, accepted the position after finishing his sixth season at the helm of Quinnipiac, guiding the Bobcats to a 20-win season.
Rather than searching for another head coaching opportunity, the recently dismissed Rice head coach, Scott Pera, has become Penn State’s general manager.
With direct athlete compensation now implemented, a team’s total basketball budget has a completely new line item — and as Power 4 schools and some mid-majors build out front offices to prepare, the entire budget should be revisited by athletic directors.
Coaching salaries have been inflated across the entire NCAA landscape, but Power 4 schools can absorb this inefficiency and still max out their roster spend under the de facto salary cap. Mid-majors no longer have the luxury to operate in this fashion.
It is no secret that low- and mid-major schools lack the resources to pay players at Power 4 levels. Now, these schools face a reality that coaching compensation directly impacts what they can offer athletes. This forces a new question: where does spending maximize output? On the court, or behind the clipboard?
Many mid-major schools are paying their head coaches over a million dollars. We can look at coaches in the top Mid-Major leagues to see some of these figures:
Frank Martin, UMass: $1.83 million
Archie Miller, Rhode Island: $2.17 million
Anthony Grant, Dayton: $2.25 million
Randy Bennett, Saint Mary’s: $1.34 million
Herb Sendek, Santa Clara: $1.20 million
Bryce Drew, Grand Canyon: $1.37 million
Power 4 conferences are preparing to spend anywhere from $4 million to $ 6 million on revenue sharing alone for their basketball teams.
At a bare minimum, mid-major schools will need to be able to piece together a $2-3 million player compensation budget to field a nationally relevant roster. With great scouting, efficient spending, and player development, a team with this type of budget can likely be competitive.
If you are a mid-major basketball team with a total coach and player budget of approximately $3 to $5 million, the new economic realities of college sports should impact how you are thinking about who to hire and what you are paying them.
If you are one of the above schools, currently allocating over a million dollars to a head coach, with a combined coaching and on-court talent budget of $5,000,000, that means anywhere from 20% to 40% of the entire team's spending is tied up in the head coach's salary alone. As we will see, there is little precedent for this in other professional leagues.
With direct athlete payment now a reality, college basketball economics now look a lot like Europe’s top leagues. Teams across the EuroLeague have differing player and coach combined compensation budgets, ranging from €4.1 million to €20.5 million, with a median spend of €13.35 million. Much like modern college basketball, top European teams are resourced to quadruple the spending of smaller teams.
In the EuroLeague, spending such a heavy percentage of available funds on head coaching salaries would be an anomaly. Even the highest-paying clubs rarely dedicate more than 5–7% of their total player-plus-coach payroll to the head coach.
AS Monaco paid Vassilis Spanoulis €833,000 of a €14.7 million budget (~5.7%).
ASVEL paid Pierric Poupet €125,000 of a €5.58 million budget (~2.2%)
Paris Basketball paid Tiago Splitter €350,000 of a €5.625 million budget (~6.2%).
In Europe, winning is about the roster. Teams keep coaching costs lean so they can stack talent on the floor. Coaches accept it. They know that if they win, they’ll jump to a bigger contract elsewhere. After overachieving relative to the team budget, Paris Basketball’s Tiago Splitter jumped to an assistant job with the Trailblazers after just his first year as a head coach in the EuroLeague.
Contrast that with mid-major college basketball, where the instinct has long been to pay coaches lucrative deals, trying to keep up with power conference spending and purchase program stability. Under the old system, that made sense. If you had the money, there was no real penalty for pouring it into coaching contracts.
Once again, great coaches absolutely squeeze out wins with less talent. I am not saying coaching doesn’t matter. However, when it comes to coaching salaries versus roster investment, we must be honest about the value of someone’s X’s and O’s compared to hundreds of thousands in additional spending for your program.
Roster spend is finally real. Unlike the days of cost-free amateur talent, at the mid-major level, money tied up in a coach is money that can’t go to players. Over the last four seasons, with third-party NIL collectives effectively paying players, we’ve already seen that money talks.
For the decades before NIL, recruiting was driven by coaching pedigree, geography, athletic development, facilities, and academics. Those things still matter. But they’re becoming secondary to a much simpler question: How much are you going to pay me?
In the past, legendary mid-major coaches like John Chaney, Steve Fisher, Phil Martelli, and Mark Few elevated programs without a rich history or power conference amenities to national relevance. Those leaders were the draw. More and more, when dollars and cents are the main drivers of recruiting battles, the value of the man in charge is diminished.
In an era of unprecedented roster transience — with the portal and short-term NIL deals — player development under one coach is less of a guarantee. That doesn’t mean coaches don’t develop players, but the idea of hiring a mid-major culture-builder who’ll mold athletes over four years is harder to justify when your best talents might only be around for a season or two.
Is development important? Yes.
Is it antiquated? Maybe.
It would be short-sighted not to acknowledge that big coaching hires are often large catalysts for donations. A splashy hire like Will Wade at McNeese, Frank Martin at UMass, or Steve Alford at Nevada can push boosters to donate in comparison to less sexy hires, like Indiana State opted to do with Josh Schertz, a then-promising Division II standout coach.
But you know what gets fans to donate sustainably? Success.
Mid-majors have a path forward in the new landscape — if they’re willing to flip the script.
Daring schools can get lean on coaching, keep head coach salaries in the $400,000 to $600,000 range (10-15% of total player and coach compensation), and pour the majority of their basketball spend into what actually drives wins: player compensation, retention, and the support staff around the roster.
Within this system is an appeal for ambitious young coaches. Programs can pitch themselves as springboards — offering visibility, the financial resources to build a competitive roster, and the chance for a head coach to prove they can win on a meaningful stage.
Once again, we see the European model. Look at Paris Basketball. They didn’t break the bank paying a young Finnish coach like Tuomas Iisalo. However, in 2023, his unique offensive system won them the EuroCup, raised his profile, and landed him an assistant coaching job with the Memphis Grizzlies. Within two years of coaching in Europe’s second league, he is now the head coach in Memphis.
As mentioned earlier, Tiago Splitter followed in Iisalo’s footsteps and landed with the Portland Trailblazers. Paris built a model that continues to attract hungry coaches willing to bet on themselves, and these coaches continue to advance their careers. Mid-majors, pay attention.
Not every coach can be an Iisalo or Splitter. Let’s be real. However, there is no shortage of ambitious basketball minds who, with the right funding, can assemble a roster and scheme worthy of competing. If they can do it for less money than the established names that used to hold more weight in recruiting battles, so be it.
Many mid-majors already have multi-year contracts with their head coaches in place. But this is a blueprint they should study closely.
The right hires might not always be headline-grabbers, but if mid-majors accept that coaches who find success will always be flight risks — and put most of their dollars into talent on the floor — there’s a path to sustained competitiveness.
Coaching pedigree no longer carries the same weight in recruiting battles. Offering ambitious coaches a lean paycheck and a well-resourced roster, with a mutual understanding that the gig is a stepping stone, might be uncomfortable, but it’s likely the most effective model.
In this new professionalized era of college sports, the smartest mid-majors will invest in their rosters, and maybe their front offices, but not in coaching legacy. And for the right kind of coach? That’s exactly the kind of opportunity that can launch a career.
Noah Henderson is the Director of the Sport Management Program and a Clinical Instructor at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business. His work explores the intersection of law, economics, and the social consequences of college athletics, particularly in the areas of name, image, and likeness (NIL), athlete labor rights, and sports gambling.
Henderson helped amend Illinois’ NIL legislation and played a direct role in establishing early frameworks that facilitated the legal payment of college athletes at Student Athlete NIL. He continues to advise athletic departments, brands, and sports agents nationwide on NIL policy, legal compliance, and best practices.
He contributed extensively to Sports Illustrated’s NIL Daily, where his reporting and commentary helped shape public understanding of the evolving business of college athletics. His insights have been featured by ESPN, NPR, CNN, PBS, Sportico, the Chicago Tribune, and others.
Henderson holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Illinois College of Law and a degree in Economics from Saint Joseph’s University, where he was a four-year letter winner on the golf team.
Very well written and informative Noah. The professionalization of amateur sports is here and it would appear the squeeze is clearly in the middle.