‘Tip of the iceberg’: Pay for women’s college basketball coaches is skyrocketing. How high can it go?

When Brenda Frese got her first coaching job at Kent State in 1993, the $500-per-month paycheck was so paltry, Frese got a side gig working at Little Caesars Pizza.

Two years later, when she was hired as an assistant at Iowa State and got bumped up to $50,000 per year, “I thought I was rich,” she said.

Frese laughs about it now because she understands how ludicrous it all sounds — especially considering her pay from Maryland, consistently one of the top women’s basketball programs in the country, is more than $1.4 millionthis season.

For 15 years, USA TODAY Sports has published a survey detailing compensation of men’s basketball coaches at 65 or more Division I schools. Now, for the first time, USA TODAY Sports is analyzing women’s basketball coaches' pay in a comparable survey.

That inclusion, coaches say, is a testament to how rapidly the women’s game has grown over the past decade in popularity and investment.

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More coaches than ever are being paid significant money in 2021-22. What was once an outlier in women’s basketball, reserved only for the heaviest hitters in the sport, has become much more common, with at least 11 coaches making $1 million or more in totalannual compensation, led by Connecticut's Geno Auriemma, South Carolina’s Dawn Staley and LSU's Kim Mulkey.

(Pay numbers are not available for the highest-paid coaches who work at private schools, including Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer, Baylor’s Nicki Collen, Duke's Kara Lawson and Southern California’s Lindsay Gottlieb.)

The survey group comprises coaches in the Power Five conferences and at schools whose teams have played in at least three of the past five NCAA tournaments — 87 coaches, with pay numbers available for 68.

To provide additional context, USA TODAY Sports partnered with students at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to examine contracts for coaches at current Power Five public schools and 11-time national champion Connecticut from 10 years ago. That effort produced figures for 49 coaches.

These are some of the findings:

• Among the 49 schools for which figures could be determined for 2011-12 and 2021-22, the average pay, adjusted for inflation, rose from nearly $700,000 to nearly $900,000.

• Ten seasons ago, the highest-paid coach was Tennessee's Pat Summitt, at just under $2 million (a little more than $2.4 million adjusted for inflation). This season, Auriemma is making $2.9 million, Staley and Mulkey more than $2.6 million each.

• Among the 68 coaches for whom current-season figures could be obtained, , 44 are women, and their average pay is $733,000; ; average pay for the 24 men is $785,000.

• Of the 15 highest-paid, seven are women, whose average pay is nearly $1.6 million; eight are men, and their average pay is just over $1.4 million.

• The average pay for a women's basketball coach in this season's survey is $750,000; the average pay for a coach in the men's basketball survey is nearly $3.1 million. However, this number is being affected by $9.5 million in one-time retention payments for three Power Five coaches - Michigan State's Tom Izzo, Kansas' Bill Self and LSU's Will Wade. These payments account for 4 percent of the men's coaches' pay.

Across the country, women’s coaches say being paid equal, or at least closer, to their men’s counterparts is long overdue — and so is the public knowledge of their salaries. Fans need to understand how wide the gap is, coaches say.

“In women’s basketball, what I’m making is the tip of the iceberg,” Staley told USA TODAY Sports. “Monetarily, there is so much more out there that we can get as we’re growing the game. In the men’s game, even if you’re unproven, you come in making what I’m making now. It’s ridiculous.”

'A huge statement for women's basketball'

For over a decade, Auriemma and Summitt, who built dueling dynasties and won a combined 19 titles, were the only coaches who commanded big money. That started to change when Mulkey, who won three titles at Baylor, also crossed the $1 million threshold around 2009 or 2010.

Mulkey's deal with LSU in April 2021 was the first of three that have re-set the top of the women's basketball market. A month later, Connecticut announced a new deal with Auriemma, putting him at $2.9 million for this season and setting him up to hit $3 million and beyond in upcoming years. Staley’s contract, which essentially matches Auriemma's, followed in October.

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“When Dawn got that contract, she didn’t do it for herself,” said Arizona coach Adia Barnes. “She did it to help the game, because that’s who she is. That was a huge statement for women’s basketball. What her and Kim have done, what they’ve demanded, that’s good for all of us.”

Barnes has had a unique head coaching journey when it comes to compensation. Hired by Arizona, her alma mater, in 2016, she was one of the lowest-paid coaches in the Power Five at the time, bringing in just $235,000. It didn’t faze her.

“I knew Arizona was taking a chance on me, and I knew I had to prove myself,” she said. “I'm fine with betting on myself. I always have been.”

She quickly rebuilt the Wildcats, bringing in some of the nation’s top recruiting classes and winning the 2019 WNIT. Last season, an extension and significant raise were announced on March 18, which had been in the works for several months.

But when fourth-seeded Arizona made a surprise run to the title game, Barnes quickly became one of the hottest names on the coaching circuit. (Baylor, which had lost Mulkey, made a run at her before ultimately hiring Collen, formerly of the WNBA Atlanta Dream.) So Barnes got to act like a men’s coach: Just seven weeks later, she renegotiated again, bringing her annual base up to $1 million — a nearly 75% pay increase.

“I wasn’t worried about money,” Barnes said. “It was more about market value, and knowing what I was capable of making. Interest in me drove up my value.”

Still, she can’t help but wonder how things would be different if she coached men.

“The system is very flawed. Our sport makes money, but the way ESPN packages and sells (the championships) to advertisers, we don’t get to see it. The report showed all those discrepancies,” Barnes said, referring to the investigation commissioned by the NCAA on gender disparities at its championships, a response to outcry during last year's men's and women's tournaments. The findings, published last August, said the NCAA “significantly” undervalues women’s basketball.

“Think about Tara (VanDerveer),” Barnes said. “She’s a legend, she’s won three titles and more than 1,100 games. If she was coaching men’s basketball, she’d be making $9-10 million a year like Coach K.”

Tournaments bring change

So what’s next?

Besides raising base salaries for head coaches, Staley said another way schools can prove they’re serious about investing in women’s sports is to pay female assistants similar to male assistants, something she fought for at South Carolina years before her big pay day in October.

Additionally, women’s coaches want more equity when it comes to bonuses.

“Why should a men’s coach get, say, a $25,000 bonus for academic success, a certain graduate rate or team GPA, but a women’s coach who does the exact same thing only gets a $5,000 bonus?” Barnes said.

Job security is another hurdle. Former Arizona men’s coach Sean Miller — who was embroiled in a recruiting scandal that ultimately played a part in his departure from the school last spring — had significantly more leverage than Barnes.

That’s not a unique situation. Across the board, even for women’s coaches making big money, contracts often don’t guarantee a large buyout like they do with men’s basketball and football coaches. It’s not uncommon to hear about those coaches being paid millions of dollars to hit the road.

Consider that in Barnes’ seven seasons at Arizona, the Wildcats have fired two football coaches and one men’s basketball coach, and were on the hook to pay them a combined $14.7 million. But according to the USA TODAY Sports survey, contracts for women's coaches don't include nearly the same level of financial assurances.

“I bet you that a lot of coaches don’t know that,” Frese said. “In contract talks, it’s presented to you as, ‘Here’s the money we’re going to pay you as long as you’re not fired for cause.’ "

So much of the money conversation comes down to a simple fact, Frese said: “In women’s basketball, especially as women, we are conditioned to be grateful for any money.”

But that’s changing. Almost everyone points back to last year's tournaments, where inequities were put in the spotlight, including different weight rooms and logos. The subsequent conversations forced the NCAA and schools to re-evaluate their priorities.

“What happened in San Antonio (at the women's tournament) is going to help us,” Staley said. “We know how big this game can grow. And once you get people, especially women’s basketball fans, rallied, you don’t have to say much — they’ll say it for you.”

Frese can’t help but wonder if sometime in the future, with salary data becoming available, athletics departments wanting to invest in women’s sports and equal pay advocates holding schools accountable, athletics directors could be pitted against each other for top women’s coaching talent, the way they are in football and men’s basketball.

In Staley’s mind, the conversation needs to be personalized.

“I often think about how these decision makers at all levels of our game and our universities, a lot of them have daughters,” she said. “Would you want your daughter to be treated as less than? Your wife or sister or mom? I know there’s a budget. But you pay someone who hasn’t been productive to leave — so you need to pay people who are being productive, too.”

The bottom line, women’s coaches say: there’s plenty of money out there. It’s time they get more of it.

Follow Lindsay Schnell on Twitter @Lindsay_Schnell

Contributing: Bryan Armetta, Matthew Benson, Cale Clinton, Zeke Cohen, Cameron Cortigiano, Nolan Hughes, Sean Manzella, Meyer McCaulsky, Calvin Milliner, Micah Pruyn Goldstein, Jalen Wade, Fred Wilkes, Dean Zulkofske

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Women's basketball coaches pay rapidly rising, per USA TODAY survey