When Texas and Nebraska confronted off within the NCAA Division I Girls’s Volleyball Championship title match this previous December in Tampa, it featured two of probably the most outstanding coaches within the sport.
Jerritt Elliott and John Cook dinner have a mixed seven nationwide titles and gained greater than 83 % of their matches over the 20-plus years they’ve been at their respective colleges.
They’re additionally two of the highest-paid coaches in school volleyball.
Together with bonuses for reaching the national-title match and profitable the Massive Ten championship, Cook dinner earned $978,750 for the 2023 season.
Elliot was paid $724,750 for profitable the nationwide title (Each numbers could possibly be larger as soon as camps and different perks are factored in).
Nonetheless, these volleyball salaries pale compared to what the coaches in final yr’s girls’s basketball championship sport had been paid. LSU’s Kim Mulkey earned a reported $3.3 million for the 2022-23 season, whereas Iowa’s Lisa Bluder earned greater than $1.14 million.
After which each basketball coaches acquired contract extensions. Mulkey signed a 10-year, $36 million deal, making her the highest-paid coach in her sport, whereas Bluder signed an settlement that elevated her base pay to $1 million, which made her the ninth-highest quantity in girls’s basketball.
Whereas volleyball continued to make nice strides on the courtroom, within the stands and on tv in 2023, the game nonetheless has floor to make up in budgets and salaries in comparison with different girls’s sports activities, particularly basketball.
“Girls’s volleyball is booming, and evaluating our salaries throughout the board to girls’s basketball, they’re so much much less,” Creighton coach Kristen Bernthal Sales space mentioned.
Whereas there is no such thing as a single reply for why volleyball lags up to now behind basketball and plenty of male sports activities, nevertheless, nearly each coach interviewed mentioned one issue is that volleyball doesn’t have a comparable male sport.
Males’s and girls’s basketball are probably the most easy pairing. Softball and baseball steadiness one another, and soccer is obtainable for each genders at many colleges. Of NCAA sports activities, solely subject hockey, rowing, and bowling would not have male equivalents.
“We don’t have a male counterpart, and I feel that’s in all probability the most important purpose,” Pitt coach Dan Fisher mentioned. “Together with that, girls’s basketball has been on TV way more than we have now. The extra we get on TV, although, it’ll proceed to get higher.”
Volleyball – together with girls’s gymnastics – is totally different as a result of the feminine sport is extra common than the male model. Whereas 28 Division I colleges play males’s volleyball, with two extra becoming a member of in 2025, the ladies’s sport far outpaces it for consideration and spending.
“That is the one sport that ladies are main the best way,’ Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield mentioned. “You don’t have that benefit of with the ability to examine what’s going on within the males’s aspect.”
One coach mentioned that after they attempt to examine their salaries to girls’s basketball, the administration shuts the dialog down. They solely wish to have a look at the identical sport. Fisher mentioned directors typically first look inside their convention after which look nationally at different volleyball coaches.
The AVCA publishes an annual wage survey that helps lay out what different volleyball coaches are utilizing, however directors should not assured to see the report. Sales space, the AVCA president, mentioned they encourage top-tier coaches to get brokers.
“Hopefully, they’ve that leverage to proceed to maneuver the needle,” she mentioned. “Most coaches are fairly good about sharing that data. A few of its public information, however they’ll disguise cash, like a base wage doesn’t inform the entire story.”
Evaluating coach’s salaries is just not all the time easy. The bottom wage listed in contracts won’t really mirror what head coaches are paid. They might be paid additional for media appearances, and nearly all coaches have incentives primarily based on convention and postseason success.
Whereas all NCAA colleges should submit annual monetary data to the NCAA, the transparency degree varies from establishment to establishment. Non-public colleges, like nine-time champion Stanford, would not have to launch any monetary data. A number of public establishments are coated below a state exemption to open information legal guidelines. For instance, Penn State doesn’t should disclose particular person salaries for coaches – solely how a lot whole compensation the workers receives.
Cook dinner and Elliott, after all, are on the upper finish of the teaching pay price.
Kentucky coach Craig Skinner, whose staff gained the spring 2021 NCA A title, has a base price of $475,000, whereas Sheffield, whose staff gained all of it in 2020, begins at $474,445. The commonality between all 4 is that they’ve gained a nationwide championship.
Nonetheless, Cook dinner, who has gained 4 NCAA titles, misplaced a part of his compensation package deal final yr.
In his earlier contract, which was signed in 2020 when Invoice Moos was the athletic director, Cook dinner was slated to earn a $750,000 retention bonus if he was nonetheless the Nebraska coach on December 31, 2022. Nonetheless, Cook dinner signed an up to date contract with new AD Trev Alberts earlier than then, which nullified the bonus. For the fiscal yr 2023, Cook dinner acquired $1.42 million in whole compensation.
Within the new contract, Cook dinner’s base wage went from $675,000 in 2022 to $725,000 for the 2023 season and as much as $750,000 on February 1, 2024. Along with the wage improve, Cook dinner added a clause the place members of the family might journey to 4 regular-season away matches and postseason event matches.
Louisville’s Dani Busboom Kelly is among the higher-paid girls coaches, with a base price of $400,000. Florida’s Mary Clever earned $495,233 in fiscal yr 2022. Ohio State’s Jen Flynn Oldenburg’s base price is simply over $300,000. She earned greater than $400K for the 2021-22 yr. Fisher of Pittsburgh’s base wage for 2023 was $521,833.
Most first-year coaches begin on the decrease finish of the pay scale.
Leslie Gabriel started with a base wage of $187,000 at Washington after being elevated final yr from an assistant coach after taking on for Keegan Cook dinner. Cook dinner left for Minnesota and signed a contract with the Gophers with a base pay of $425,000.
Oklahoma’s Aaron Mansfield earned a base wage of $230,000 for his first season in 2023. Assistant Mike Schall changed long-time coach Joe Sagula at North Carolina final yr. Schall had a base contract of simply $150,000 for the 2023 season. In the meantime, Texas A&M first-year coach Jamie Morrison operated this previous season with no signed contract.
Whereas all these coaches make six figures, how they stack up in every athletic division varies significantly.
John Cook dinner at Nebraska and Hugh McCutcheon at Minnesota had been the one volleyball coaches with the very best respective salaries for girls’s sports activities at their colleges in the course of the 2021-22 educational yr. McCutcheon, who retired after the 2022 season, was at the moment the highest-paid volleyball coach within the nation.
Of the faculties the place the volleyball coach ranks second, all of them trailed girls’s basketball. As well as, Ohio State’s ice hockey coach and the LSU softball coach had been additionally paid greater than the volleyball coach at these colleges.
Sagula, who guided the Tar Heels for 33 years, earned simply $292,356 for fiscal yr 2022. He was the sixth highest-paid coach of a girls’s sport at Carolina, trailing basketball, soccer, subject hockey, lacrosse and tennis.
Arkansas coach Jason Watson had a base wage of $247,610 however trails basketball, softball, soccer, observe and subject, gymnastics and golf.
“What worth does volleyball carry to college versus basketball, soccer, or baseball?” Skinner requested. “I imagine that success and worth ought to be comparable as a result of we’ve already portrayed in school athletics that it’s not a typical enterprise mannequin.
“So it’s a problem. It’s troublesome. My greatest problem with the entire thing is that the spending hole retains getting greater. And (girls’s athletics) is 100 years behind.”
Sales space mentioned when she makes the case for growing the funding in volleyball, she doesn’t need it to return on the expense of different girls’s sports activities. Followers of volleyball are likelier to be followers of softball or different girls’s sports activities.
“We don’t wish to make it us versus different girls’s sports activities. We wish to construct up the truth that girls’s sports activities are booming,” she mentioned. “We don’t suppose this stuff are finite. We wish to construct one another up as girls’s sports activities advocates as a result of we expect we’ve obtained nice merchandise and a whole lot of totally different sports activities.”
Coaches salaries are only one a part of the general funding within the sport.
Tv publicity, expanded help workers and extra sources can all make a distinction in this system. Whereas publicity and recognition are growing for volleyball, revenues nonetheless have a methods to go to have packages become profitable.
The Lincoln Journal Star reported that just one public Energy 5 girls’s program turned a revenue: Nebraska volleyball.
Whereas a number of girls’s basketball packages introduced in additional income than Nebraska – South Carolina listed $4.1 million in income, whereas UConn reported $3.5 million – the upper revenue was offset by bigger coaches contracts. In response to USA In the present day’s database, Daybreak Staley is paid $2.7 million at South Carolina, whereas UConn’s Geno Auriemma earns $2.9 million.
Cook dinner, the very best earner in school volleyball, makes 1 / 4 of that quantity, which additionally permits Nebraska volleyball to be worthwhile.
At the same time as volleyball blossoms, there are nonetheless areas for development.
Earlier this yr, ESPN agreed to a brand new tv contract to broadcast the postseason on its community. The deal consists of 21 girls’s and 19 males’s occasions, together with volleyball and girls’s basketball. The deal’s worth elevated from roughly $40 million per yr to $115 million yearly.
Sheffield says they nonetheless have room to enhance upon postseason protection. Having all of the first- and second-round NCAA matches streamed on ESPN+ is a constructive step, however when ESPN first made the postseason streaming plan, announcers wouldn’t be supplied, however they later reversed course after public outcry.
“A couple of years in the past once we had been instructed that for the primary time ever, all of the matches are going to be streamed that opening weekend,” Sheffield mentioned. “Oh by the best way, there’s not going to be any announcers. It’s like we’re getting too enthusiastic about this. Are there enhancements in numerous issues, whether or not it’s the courtroom, whether or not it’s monetary issues, completely. Nevertheless it’s not the jumps which can be taking place with those which have a male comparability.”
Sales space mentioned former Creighton athletic director Bruce Rasmussen all the time mentioned colleges might make investments so much much less into volleyball to construct a high 20 program than you might into girls’s basketball, and a whole lot of that’s teaching salaries.
She mentioned the game has a whole lot of potential to develop within the Southeast and Northeast elements of the nation. Sales space mentioned the trail to constructing a program consists of being full-funded for scholarships, having the suitable management in place, having the sources to journey to play the suitable groups, creating a advertising plan and charging admission to provide the product worth.
“In case you have a plan, and also you execute after which you have got a superb product, you possibly can put butts within the seats,” Sales space mentioned.
Elliott mentioned he retains spreadsheets monitoring all this system’s bills and is all the time seeking to discover new methods to extend the worth of the game.
The game has come a great distance because the spring NCAA event in Omaha in April of 2021 throughout COVID, when tents had been used as makeshift locker rooms when matches had been performed in a conference heart. Nonetheless, not all the things is ideal. On the 2023 NCAA Division I Girls’s Volleyball Championship, two groups had been positioned on the identical lodge in Tampa. Their assembly and eating areas had been adjoining and lacked privateness.
The struggle for help additionally carries over to personnel and help workers. In a sampling of high packages, the typical volleyball coach made $148,032 in the course of the 2022 fiscal yr. That lags far behind the typical of $239,759 for girls’s basketball. Volleyball additionally trails the typical assistant pay price for softball ($152,512) and is simply forward of soccer ($135,158). The hole is even bigger when including within the issue that basketball had three assistants that yr whereas volleyball, softball and soccer every had two however added one other teaching place final season.
Cook dinner just lately acquired a name from a fellow Massive Ten coach who mentioned they had been attempting to persuade their administration to permit them so as to add a technical/video coordinator. Cook dinner and his program have entry to help and loads of sources, however not all coaches are as lucky. He’s all the time attempting to make sure that assistant coaches are paid effectively and aren’t tempted to depart for an additional assistant place at different colleges due to wage.
“We struggle these battles on a regular basis,” Cook dinner mentioned. “It’s a neater battle for girls’s basketball coaches to struggle for these forms of wage will increase, staffing, and so forth as a result of the lads have it.”
As one of many leaders in teaching wage, Elliott says he feels some stress to lift the bar so his colleagues can be paid extra. Skinner mentioned it’s a problem to have conversations about salaries and monetary help as a result of he by no means dreamed he would make as a lot as he’s from teaching volleyball.
Nonetheless, the salaries mirror the coaches’ worth to varsity athletics, help for a premier girls’s sport, and laying the inspiration for future coaches.
“It’s about doing what is true for our sport, ” Sheffield mentioned, “and for the folks that come behind us having the sources, the help and all these issues.”
Click on right here to learn our accompanying story that lists the highest teaching salaries.
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