UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham has a new contract and raise. Is Hubert Davis next?
A couple of days after the Tar Heels returned from the Final Four, Cunningham acknowledged that “we’ve got to do something” when asked about Hubert’s income being near the bottom of the 15-school ACC barrel.
Davis made $525,000 in merit bonuses for leading his first team into the Final Four, and he would have received another $250,000 if the Heels had beaten KU in the NCAA championship game.
That got him above the $2 million benchmark but still near-last in the ACC. In 2021, the latest coaching compensation to be released, only BC’s since-fired Jim Christian made less than Davis earned his first season.
Most big-time coaches make more than their athletic directors and school presidents. So despite Cunningham’s complicated raise that will get him close to $2 million a year, it is still less than the coach he named to succeed Roy Williams. That’s just the way it is in college athletics these days.
While Cunningham and UNC got a great deal by promoting Davis, a solid bump still won’t put Hubert anywhere near what Carolina was paying Hall of Famer Williams ($4.12 million) or what Syracuse is paying icon Jim Boeheim ($3.8 million), perhaps the highest paid coach in the ACC since Mike Krzyzewski retired.
Williams’ strongest supporters bristled that Coach K was earning about twice as much as Ole’ Roy, who in his 18 years at Carolina won more games, more ACC regular season titles, more NCAA tourney games and more national championships than the Duke coaching legend.
Call it a correction for a rookie head coach, Davis still had a sizable income jump from his annual salary as an assistant for nine years under Williams. And when the 2021-22 Tar Heels got off to a slow start, some critics claimed Hubert was already overpaid.
They were silenced by his great coaching job in February, March and April, replaced by the excitement that brought millions more pouring into UNC in gifts and licensing royalties. After all, Mack Brown got a contract extension and million-plus more after his third team went 6-7.
All that adds up to raises for Davis and his entire coaching staff. They don’t deserve to be anywhere near the bottom of the ACC.
Featured image via Todd Melet
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