Round one of the 2023 March Madness basketball tournament is underway and this year’s tournament features nearly all of the highest-paid coaches in the NCAA.
College basketball coaches can stay at universities far longer than the players can, and they oftentimes become the face of a school’s basketball program — and are compensated well for that. Of the 15 highest-paid basketball coaches in the NCAA, 14 of them had their team qualify for the 2023 March Madness tournament.
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Here’s a list of the highest-paid college basketball coaches based on their salary this year, which was compiled by BetMGM
MGM,
:
| 1 | John Calipari | Kentucky | $8.5 million |
| 2 | Bill Self | Kansas | $6 million |
| 3 | Tom Izzo | Michigan St. | $5.7 million |
| 4 | Rick Barnes | Tennessee | $5.5 million |
| 4 | Bruce Pearl | Auburn | $5.5 million |
| 6 | Tony Bennett | Virginia | $4.8 million |
| 7 | Brad Underwood | Illinois | $4.6 million |
| 8 | Bob Huggins | West Virginia | $4.2 million |
| 9 | Mick Cronin | UCLA | $4.1 million |
| 9 | Eric Musselman | Arkansas | $4.1 million |
| 9 | Buzz Williams | Texas A&M | $4.1 million |
| 12 | Dana Altman | Oregon | $4 million |
| 12 | Tommy Lloyd | Arizona | $4 million |
| 14 | Kevin Willard | Maryland | $3.9 million |
| 15 | Ed Cooley | Providence | $3.8 million |
Kentucky coach John Calipari leads the 2023 list with $8.5 million in earnings, and is currently on a 10-year contract that expires in 2029. The next highest-paid coaches are Kansas’s Bill Self and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo.
It’s likely that compensation for some of these coaches will change depending on their team’s performance in the March Madness tournament. That’s because it’s extremely common for coaches to get bonuses for tournament success.
The only person on this list who coached a program that didn’t qualify for the 2023 tournament was University of Oregon’s Dana Altman.
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Alabama, Houston, Kansas and Purdue are the top seeds in this year’s tournament, with Alabama earning its first-ever No. 1 seed in the tournament in school history.
The most popular teams that bettors are choosing to wager on to win the entire tournament are Kentucky (9%), followed by Texas A&M (8%), Gonzaga, UCLA and Alabama (6%). Houston is seen as the betting favorite to win the tournament, according to DraftKings
DKNG,
Sportsbook, followed by Alabama and Purdue.
The opening round of the 2023 men’s March Madness tournament started on Thursday afternoon with a game between West Virginia and Maryland.
Read on: 2023 March Madness will see 68 million American bettors, projections show
