way less than Boals' salary, they were successful and got raises. The same happened with Boals' -- thought to a lesser degree (his starting salary was already quite high relatively).
No, but we're making them earn the salary. They have success, you pay to keep them. But you don't pay for past success for longer than you need to, and that's what's happening with Boals right now.
We have to be ruthless about how we spend money cause we don't have a ton of it.
To prevent the quotes from getting longer than they already are, responding here. I don’t think we actually fundamentally disagree on anything in this, just acknowledging different approaches. The thing that stuck out to me is that Ohio may have played a role in the MAC coaching arms race taking off. There was a time where Jeff became the highest payed coach in the conference, then when teams like Akron, Kent, and Toledo had success against him, that salary was used as leverage until they all caught up. In some ways, that is kind of our fault. It just seems as though with the current state of MAC play, the cat is out of the bag and there is a clear divide between the schools who don’t pay their coaches a high % and those who do.
On the front porch theory, the basketball specific use cases for mid majors would be the SDSU, FAU, Loyola, and the original use case was George Mason. I don’t have the specific numbers in front of me, but the George Mason case saw 2x-3x increases in applications, subsequent increases in basketball revenue, and a rush of donor support. The others I mentioned may or may not have use cases written out. Even in the Miami case, that data might not even be available for 2 years, at which point the numbers may or may not even support the theory. Some of the cases are very real, but it’s incredibly hard to actually make that happen.
To support your thinking, I can see a world where an Ohio pays $300K-$350K, allocates the extra $400K to have a more than $1M player roster every year, then sells the program to coaches as a career launchpad. You’d have a program with tradition, consistently great fan support and attendance relative to peers, and we will set you up with everything you need to succeed at a high level. The incentive is that you’re given every tool to succeed and have a much better chance at furthering your coaching career and getting to the next place. In the rev share era of college athletics, coaches will have to realize that being setup for success can be a better long term opportunity and investment than taking a higher paying job where you are setup to fail.
The cons of that approach would be that you are taking on massive risk and essentially forfeiting current salary (although let’s be honest most people would be thrilled to make $350K in a lower cost of living area like Athens) in the hopes that it will pay off with a bigger job. Even if you have a good case to sell to coaches, more often than not money talks and you’d have a hard time finding the right coach. The other risk (which is kind of a risk now) is that if the plan works, you are now hiring a new coach every 2-3 years, hiring is hard, and inevitably there will be a bad hire. The final potential risk to this is the whole thing of can MAC schools actually act as a career launchpad in this day and age? The MAC has had some really great coaches for years now in Sendy, Todd K, Steele, and Groce. At this moment, 3 out of the 4 have been unable to get the next job, and the other had to make what was essentially a lateral move in the hopes of being able to get the bigger job. I think Charleston is a good example, where the draw as a coach is that they have had 3 coaches in 5 years who all moved onto bigger and better jobs (BC, Louisville, USF). Groce at Akron wasn’t getting the next opportunity despite having all of the resources to succeed and most importantly succeeding, yet couldn’t get better than Charleston. This approach hinges on selling the ability to move up, but is that even possible in the MAC now?
Overall there is a compelling case to trying to innovate, but it comes with substantial risk. I don’t even hate the idea but college athletics administrators tend to not love taking those kinds of risks. It’s also tough given that the cat seems to be out of the bag in the good MAC programs paying their coaches.
The real solution is that we need one of the bobcatattackers to become a billionaire and fund OU athletics and we aren’t even having this conversation. We can dream!
Last Edited: 4/9/2026 11:32:38 AM by QuantCat