The truth is fund raising to increase a head coach's salary is not a tenable plan, until the structural deficiencies in the program are fixed. The current structure, with the emphasis on taking road money games and the cheapest home game you can get almost guarantees low attendance, ticket revenues, and poor seeding in the NCAA tournament. Instead of focusing on increasing Tinkle's pay to $500,000 or $1 million to keep him, focus on raising guarantee money to fix the schedule.
Here is what's in Tinkle's current contract:
The new three-year contract for Montana men's basketball coach Wayne Tinkle includes a requirement that the Griz generate at least $80,000 each year in game guarantees.
It also allows Tinkle and his assistants to share any additional money up to $150,000 brought in by the so-called "money games."
"We're kind of behind the times on it," interim athletic director Jean Gee said Tuesday. "It's a pretty common provision in Division I coaches contracts."
The contract the school announced Friday sets Tinkle's base pay at $135,000 a year, along with various benefits including a $500 monthly vehicle allowance, pay for appearing on coaches' shows and bonuses for his team's academic and athletic success.
Tinkle said he has been required to play one guarantee game in each of the past several years to help support other sports programs, but the new provision allows the school to give the men's coaches a more competitive salary without using state money.
"I think I'm the first (UM) coach that they've kind of required to play one of those games per year - a minimum of one - to bring money into the department for some of the other programs," Tinkle said.
"Money games" are road games played against larger schools in exchange for a guaranteed payment to the visiting school. In recent years, Montana has played Colorado State, UCLA, Oregon and Washington.
"I like playing bigger teams anyway," Tinkle said. "It's a good experience for our guys."
The Griz beat UCLA during the 2010-11 season and Oregon the year before.
Tinkle notes it can be difficult for Montana to schedule nonconference home games anyway, because it's "tough to get here," the teams don't recruit in Montana and the Griz are pretty tough to beat in Dahlberg Arena.
Should the Griz bring in more than $150,000 per year in game guarantees, 75 percent of the additional money will go to the athletic department and 25 percent to the men's basketball program. The additional basketball money can be used for recruiting, professional development or summer school funding for student-athletes, but not for salaries or bonuses, the contract states.
Gee said reaching the $80,000 benchmark won't be easy, but she said it's achievable.
Women's basketball coach Robin Selvig doesn't have a similar provision in his contract, Gee said, because the guarantee games just aren't there for the women's teams.
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In order to keep Tinkle (or any other good coach) Montana has to flip this around. Raising money to pay the coach more is not what is needed. Raising money to swap getting paid for money games to paying money games is what is needed. Montana is not able to schedule any big name schools because he program incentivises the coach to take a payment instead of a home and home combination.
This year is a perfect example. Montana has 0 good out of conference wins, and if they win the BSC will suffer at selection time as a result. Montana only had 2 D-I OOC home games this year, a win over #167 San Diego, and a close loss to #75 South Dakota State. They played 4 OOC road games, including 2 Money games against #15 CSU and #68 BYU, as well as #197 Idaho (the only road OOC win, and Idaho will be a conference team next year), and #170 San Francisco (the worst rpi loss all season), plus a bracket buster game @ #61 Davidson. UM also played 2 sub D-I teams that don't count at all towards rankings or post-season selection.
If funds are raised to eliminate the need to take money games, and Montana instead swapped home & home, with a guarantee payment to come here, to play a minimum of 4 good (sub 75 RPI, or major conference) teams to come here, Montana likely bumps up the RPI by 20 points or more, and now is looking at a 12 or better seed. Do that year after year and eventually you can get under a 10 seed, and start making Sweet 16 appearances.
Scheduling 4 good non-conference games bumps up pre-conference attendance by a couple thousand, and that excitement will carry over to the conference schedule. Increased attendance means increased revenue, which allows the program to pay more to coaches. A sweet 16 appearance means even more, both in terms of attendance the following year, as well as community support and funding.
The way things are structured now I expect that when the conference splits into 2 divisions next year that schools will schedule non-conference games against other conference opponents that are not in the same division, as we are seeing in BSC football schedules, to reduce costs.
If you want to help the program succeed don't worry about raising money to pay the coach, worry about fixing the schedule. That will take care of the coach's salary in the long run.