His initial contract was for 5-years. If it has never been extended than it ends on April 1.

I can't find anything about an extension, though I felt like there was one as well.

Obviously, Boals is very online, and appears to be pretty close with Julie - pretty shocked he hasn't been extended or is angling for one on the internet.

Little scary they're gonna go into 2023-2024 without a contract in place beyond 4/1. Especially since we're going to the Final Four on 4/6.

According to AN, OU's top earner was Boals at $699K. Would have to imagine an extension is topping $700-$800.

"Last year, Boals was paid $699,709 but this season he will be paid about $7,000 less at $692,000, according to Ohio University Spokesperson Carly Leatherwood. His compensation package breaks down to $592,000 base salary plus an additional $100,000 annual compensation — a total of $692,000."

Groce's extension into 29-30 has a salary of $650,000

For comparison, Nate Oates was making $837K before he left for Alabama.

https://www.athensnews.com/news/who-are-ou-s-top-earners/...

I don't understand why Boals salary would elicit outrage from some folks. He's been to the NCAA tournament once and he's going to get Ohio back there again. He's worth every penny.

The salary list of Ohio University employees is interesting. I will not share Russ Eisenstein's salary as it's easy to find. As has been discussed numerous times through the years, it's a number that after 17 years behind the mic is truly hard to believe...and I don't mean in a positive way. Stunningly low number. I give him credit for coming back year after year after year.

Does Russ also receive compensation from IMG Sports? I forget the wording of the disclaimer that airs during broadcasts but I think it says something about IMG compensating the on-air announcers. That could help make up for a low salary from Ohio.

Bet it's the cost of a family healthcare plan.

Well, if you're going to talk about the market for salaries, you must also talk about revenue. In this case, our athletic programs do not make money. At some P5 schools they do and maybe it's okay for a coach to be the highest paid employee at the university, but not at our level. I certainly think that athletics are a valuable part of the experience and for the town, but paying coaches in the dean range would be adequate in my opinion.

I know about sport, market factors, supply, revenue generation, etc.

Can you justify Boals' salary using that insight? I struggle to, honestly. But there's data o don't have access to that you might. Curious to see how the numbers look.

I think it's tempting to create a strawman here and assume anybody who things Boals' salary is too high knows nothing about sports. But I think it's pretty reasonable to wonder what Ohio University in particular gains by paying Boals what we pay him.

For instance, on market factors: how do you define our market? Is it all of D1 basketball? Just our conference? Just mid-major schools? Just schools with similar basketball budgets? This list is dated by about three years, but why is Boals paid so much more than Groce or Miami's coach, and 2x some Conference USA teams? What market factor dictates that?


In the business world, you're typically advised to keep your payroll below 25% of your revenue. The latest revenue figure I could find for OU basketball was 2.8m a year. That means we pay a single person 25% of revenue. How does Groce, specifically, increase revenue. Is attendance up meaningfully? Is revenue?

Very curious because I've been wondering this for a while.

Edit: Found another source: https://www.midmajormadness.com/2018/6/11/17441968/ncaa-r... .

There seem to be a lot of schools who have substantially higher MBB revenue than us, with coaches paid substantially less. In fact, Boals' salary is a pretty big outlier in the market. Toledo's revenue is basically the same as ours, their coach made over 200k less. Rhode Island and George Mason have more revenue (by about 50%) -- Boals makes almost 2x what their coaches make.

Not sure I'm seeing the market forces/revenue argument here.

Its debatable whether D1 athletics brings value or is a burden for alumni. One angle is every public university has a segment that wants to be FBS. Kennesaw State caved to the pressures and moved up to D1 and on to FBS. Is it a burden on alumni having to pay higher ticket prices for athletics and feeling pressure to support it? Are G5 athletics the happy medium where a universtity can be thought of as a real D1 school and not a low major without going all out on sports?

OU I think would love to have a name basketball and football team for publicity but in all due time and with private donations instead of the UC approach where it was fake it until you make it spend big in football/basketball for a long time and now they've arrived in the Big 12. One look at what UC is spending and Boal's salary by comparison is quite modest.

I won't speak to Boals versus other coaches at comparable programs...my point was the concept of sports coaches being the highest paid employees at a college. It is very competitive and difficult to find the right person with the right experience and moxie to lead a D1 program to prominence. And in terms of value provided, looking at simply revenue generated is not enough. Literally the only alumni I know that have any connection at all to their alma mater are big Bobcat sports fans. A huge portion of the general awareness and image of the university comes from sports. One could argue the athletic department has 2 functions...1 the operations and revenue generation that we are arguing about and 2 a powerful marketing expense to the university.

On the flipside, I'm just not sure the same is true for talented and competent educational administrators.

This argument doesn't apply to 100% of the university community, maybe half care at all about D1 athletics. That is reason enough to have it. Locally it brings in revenue to Athens and surrounding towns.

Nobody is debating this basic point.

But shouldn't we be able to explain the thesis behind paying Boals more than most of his counterparts, and be able to roughly see the value he's creating from this marketing?

This attendance file I found from the NCAA says in 2022, OU averaged 5.7K in home attendance.

MAC average was 2.5K per game. Akron averaged 1.9K per game.

So OU is doubling the conference average. Tripling their rivals. That sounds pretty impressive to me.

¯\_(;)_/¯

Also, this file is super interesting. Has all teams, divisions, conferences.
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/2023/Attend...