Why it doesn’t matter that Shane Beamer is the lowest paid coach in the SEC
As Will Muschamp’s final few seasons with South Carolina rolled on, a familiar lament at times rose from the Gamecock faithful.
He’s getting paid how much to win like this?
On its face, the complaint made some sense. The USC head man was getting paid more than $4 million a year. That sure seems like a lot for a coach whose team was enduring back-to-back seasons below even his own minimal standard (with him saying they’d been out-coached after several losses).
There are two answers to the problem. The first one is win more, though coaches seem hell-bent on doing that regardless of whether they’re getting $1 million, $2 million or $9 million. The other alternative is to pay less, which itself is really not much of a solution because people will say the school is being too cheap.
And that brings us to Shane Beamer.
The former Oklahoma and Spurrier assistant’s salary went fully public on Tuesday. He’s on track to the be lowest paid coach in the SEC and fifth-lowest paid Power 5 coach in the country. His hiring follows a model similar to Sam Pittman and to Dabo Swinney’s early years. Pay the main guy less, hire a better staff, go from there.
At some point, there might be a perception question that comes with this. If the wins don’t come, someone will invoke that rank in salary, point to the bigger picture and ask something about commitment or seriousness.
And the dirty little secret is this, assuming South Carolina has the man they want and didn’t make the choice to hire him because of the price tag — it doesn’t really matter.
Beamer won’t coach differently because of that number. And the number itself is just a temporary thing if he doesn’t fail.
We need only look to Muschamp to see that.
He likewise came in as one of the lowest-paid coaches in the conference. Then he did what can be considered an objectively good job in his first two seasons (the second maybe looked better than it was, but it hit the key benchmarks). For this, he was rewarded with a better deal, in part because coach raises tend to come with short-terms success or the threat of getting poached.
That deal bumped Muschamp to fifth in the conference in pay for a short while, before another deal or two knocked him lower. It also boosted his buyout, which alongside a one-year rollover extension ended up putting the school on the hook for more that $15 million in buyout money (athletic director Ray Tanner says he is currently negotiating something different than the terms in the contract).
And even after this experience, if Beamer delivers something beyond seven wins in Years 1, 2 or 3, chances are very good he’s getting a raise anyway. Tennessee’s Jeremy Pruitt got a raise off a soft 8-5 season, and he had a loss to Georgia State on the resume.
If Beamer were to struggle, he’d be given appropriate time and his buyout would shrink as he goes on. We’ve seen an unusual case of this at Michigan where Jim Harbaugh’s buyout is somewhat manageable, but only because he’s never beaten Ohio State and played for a Big Ten title, so the school never added more years to his deal (most coaches are kept on deals between 3-6 years, ostensibly to calm questions from recruits).
In truth, the salary more often comes with the level of the job more than anything else. Harbaugh isn’t being paid $8 million a year for any accomplishments at Michigan. Dan Mullen is making the same amount now, after going 21-5 his first two years, as he did when he arrived on campus. Getting paid $5.8 million isn’t making Tom Herman deliver Texas fans what they want. First-year Michigan State coach Mel Tucker is 14th in the country in total pay this year, per USA Today’s invaluable database, while struggling Nebraska coach Scott Frost is 17th.
The deal signed Tuesday, that’s just a starting point posed by Ray Tanner and his department. If things go well, Beamer will earn a bigger deal. If they don’t, it puts the department in a good spot down the road.
No one hires a coach with the hope things end badly, but most of the time, they do. For the moment, South Carolina fans can ask “the salary ranks where in the conference?” And if they find the answer is somewhere near the top of it, it means at some point in the tenure, things will have gone right.
