The other thing people forget about this process is that for most coaches in WCBB the process of becoming a coach involves finding an entry level job in a basketball program, and of the 349 D1 jobs most of those are nothing like the job Jasmine Lister had for two years or that Chloe Pavlech currently has - working towards a master degree and working with the best coaching staff and best program in the game. It is more like the job Mel Thomas landed at FGCU as director of basketball operations for which she was probably being paid peanuts - when she started the head coach was making $40,000. The janitorial staff and secretaries were probably making more than she was. Guess what - she left for a corporate marketing job after four years where I suspect she is making much more money and has both better career opportunities and a less crazy schedule. And FGCU is miles ahead of most mid-major schools - with their success their coach is now making $225,000 and I suspect his staff of assistants is splitting another $150,000 - 200,000 between 4 people. And no one is knocking down their doors to offer better jobs at better schools, or HC jobs at equal schools.
A grad assistant at Uconn gets hired as an assistant at a good P5, a grad assistant or basketball operations person at Temple might get offered the same job at a bad P5, and the same person coming out of College of Charleston ...
You have to really really love basketball and coaching to pay those kind of dues for the five to ten years it takes to maybe get a HC job at the College of Charleston, do really well for another 5-10 years and then maybe get hired at Albany making maybe $100K, do that for 5-10 years and get hired at a bad AAC school at double that. Or you have absolutely no other marketable skills, or go through life never being tempted by better pay and better working conditions with a job outside of coaching.
That is what Geno was talking about - his first five years coaching he worked lots of other jobs to be allowed to enjoy himself working overtime coaching, and his wife was working too to keep food on the table. He then got an plum assistant job that at that time paid peanuts, and he got the really bad opening at Uconn signing a contract to coach for peanuts. And CD was following a similar trajectory. That they succeeded at Uconn is amazing, because a lot of similar coaches flamed out when they took that first really bad HC job.
Yeah there is a lot of money at the top of the profession, but for most coaches including those that get a chance at the gold ring of a HC job, the pay stinks and the travel and hours are bad, and the pressures are high. It is like working in theater - the dream is fabulous and if you happen to make it to the top the pay is fabulous, but paying the dues to get there, the competition for those jobs, and the chance of ever arriving are terrible and if you have any other option chances are you take it sometime in the first ten years, and if you don't chances are you are still waiting tables at 50 and dreaming a little less often of that big break!
