Gard Got It All

UW men’s basketball coach Greg Gard received a $30,000 bonus for his team’s appearance in the NIT. The school got paid about $26,000 for being there. So, essentially, in a disappointing season that saw the Badgers miss the big dance, Gard pocketed all the money the school got for going to the little dance, and then some.

And how much did his players get? Well, at least they weren’t asked to take up a collection to make up the $4,000 difference between what their coach got and what they earned for him on the court.

According to a story in this morning’s Wisconsin State Journal the UW paid out $240,000 in bonuses to coaches in winter sports while it paid $333,000 in bonuses to coaches in fall sports, mostly football. Credit the paper for staying on these coach and administrator compensation stories and other news related to the business side of college sports. I didn’t see it noted in this case, but typically the State Journal has to file open records requests to get salary data. That’s a pretty good indication that the UW athletic department would rather not have these kinds of reports.

Of course they don’t. Because each one of these stories only serves to underline the ridiculous unfairness of paying coaches six, if not seven, figure salaries and then tacking on bonuses, even for middling performances, while their players can’t get a dime from the school. NIL is progress, but it’s not nearly enough. The players are clearly UW employees and they deserve to be paid for their work in addition to whatever private contracts might pay them for NIL.

To be clear, I don’t have a problem with Gard making a lot of money, though it does seem like he was rewarded for failure in the case of his team’s appearance in the lowly NIT. Coaches are only taking all that the market will bear. That’s fine. I just think their players should get their fair share of a very big and rich pie.