Sweet 16 Coaches Cashing In With Lucrative Contract Incentives

Leading a team to the Sweet 16 in March Madness is a notable achievement for any college basketball coach—and it pays well, too.

With only Power 4 programs advancing out of the second round of the men’s NCAA tournament, some of the country’s highest-paid coaches are cashing in further with contract bonuses after reaching the Sweet 16.

Here are the big bonuses for coaches with publicly available contracts: 

• $200,000: Tennessee’s Rick Barnes
• $100,000: Houston’s Kelvin Sampson
• $75,000: Maryland’s Kevin Willard, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo
• $50,000: Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd, Mississippi’s Chris Beard, Kentucky’s Mark Pope, Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, Texas Tech’s Grant McCasland
• $37,500: Florida’s Todd Golden
• $30,000: Purdue’s Matt Painter
• $25,000: Alabama’s Nate Oats, Michigan’s Dusty May

Arkansas coach John Calipari doesn’t receive a specific bonus for reaching the Sweet 16, but the achievement does add $150,000 to his salary, which has a base pay of $7 million, for next season.

Contract information for Duke’s Jon Scheyer and BYU’s Kevin Young is not publicly available since those are private institutions, but it is likely they each have similar bonus structures set up.

Executive Rewards

Coaches aren’t the only ones cashing in this March. So are many athletic directors.

Tennessee’s Danny White, the highest-paid AD in the country at $2.75 million annually, receives a bonus worth 3% of his base salary for the Volunteers reaching the Sweet 16. That’s $82,500. 

Some are still waiting for another bonus. Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart will receive $25,000 if the Wildcats reach the Final Four.

North Carolina AD and men’s tournament selection committee chairman Bubba Cunningham, who received a $67,905.66 bonus for the Tar Heels making the men’s tournament, won’t cash any more checks for the men’s basketball team after they lost to Ole Miss in the first round. He would have received $50,000 if they made the Sweet 16. Cunningham can still pocket $35,000 if UNC’s women’s team can top West Virginia on Monday night and advance to the Sweet 16.