How Dawn Staley’s salary raise had a ripple effect throughout women’s basketball
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Five years ago, when Dawn Staley returned to Columbia, S.C., from the 2021 NCAA Tournament in the bubble, she was left with a sinking feeling about how to talk with her players about the inequities the women’s teams had experienced during the tournament. That year, the NCAA made headlines as disparities between the men’s and women’s accommodations, facilities and resources were exposed.
Staley was the first coach to publicly call out then-NCAA president Mark Emmert by name in a tweet, and though the uproar ultimately caused the NCAA to commission an external investigation, Staley still felt there was more she needed to do.
That April it became obvious.
As she witnessed South Carolina’s men’s coach, Frank Martin, receive a contract extension that would continue to pay him significantly more than her (despite her team out-performing his teams), Staley knew what she needed to do.
Staley asked her longtime agent to stand down when she decided to negotiate with the university. Instead, she asked an attorney with long-standing knowledge of university politics and practices if he’d represent her in the negotiations.
“Sometimes you have to do things that are unconventional,” Staley told The Athletic in 2022 when discussing her decision.
Staley ended up inking a contract worth $22.4 million over seven years, averaging out to $3.2 million a year, just slightly less than what Martin got. (In January 2025, she signed an extension that would pay her more than $4 million a year through the 2029-30 season, making her the highest-paid coach in women’s college basketball. Martin was fired in 2022.)
For Staley, the pay raise was about more than her salary. The raise could push programs across the nation to pay their women’s coaches more equitable salaries.
And in the five years since she inked that deal, the Dawn Staley pay bump seems to have taken effect.
“Contract negotiations are challenging, but this one was especially important as I knew it could be a benchmark, an example for other universities to invest in their women’s basketball programs, too,” Staley said in the press release announcing her 2021 contract. “Our game continues to grow and the time is ripe to make a big step forward, but only if universities foster that growth by committing resources that are equitable to those given to their men’s programs.”
Including Staley, 23 power conference coaches have remained in the same job from the 2021-22 season until now. In order to better assess how Staley’s own push for equal pay might have affected how other universities dealt with their own long-term coaches, The Athletic obtained contracts for nearly every power conference coach at a public school in the country (as well as UConn’s Geno Auriemma) and analyzed salary trends. During the last five years, coaches who’ve remained in their same jobs have seen their salaries rise by 45 percent. Some of this is, of course, due to the increased investment in and attention in women’s basketball. But Staley undoubtedly raised the bar, which coaches across the country say impacted their own contract negotiations.
“Ripple effect is exactly what it is — she starts that wave when she gets an opportunity, when she fights and when she uses her voice. Her payout, her salary — it increases everybody else’s. … It’s not just for herself,” said Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey, whose contract information is not public because she’s at a private school. “She understands that when she’s fighting to get more for herself, it’s allowing other women to get more. Because that’s what the (athletic directors) are looking at. She’s the example, so we are all extremely grateful for what she’s done.”
Staley’s own salary has been near the front of the pack during that time, increasing 58 percent, while other coaches who also won national titles in that span saw significant bumps. Auriemma had a 22 percent raise and will make just more than $3.5 million in 2026, and LSU’s Kim Mulkey’s 27 percent raise got her to just more than $3.3 million in 2026.
Among power conferences (including those absorbed from the Pac-12), the ACC saw the smallest increase for its resident coaches with an average bump of 28 percent while Big Ten coaches’ salaries increased 33 percent. The SEC saw a jump of 48 percent while the Big 12 made the largest gains by increasing 80 percent, though that’s largely influenced by the fact that Big 12 coaches’ salaries in many instances have been trend-corrected in the last few years after years of having among the lowest paid power conference coaches. Also, Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie, who was reportedly pursued by Kentucky last year, got a massive raise last offseason which was an increase of more than 130 percent from his 2021-22 salary and certainly bumped the Big 12’s increase.
Including retention bonuses awarded during 2025-26, but not including results-based bonus structures, which differ greatly by contract, 16 of these two dozen coaches made at least $1 million dollars compared to just seven of them during the 2021-22 year (and 11 coaches overall across women’s college basketball, according to USA Today’s coaches salary database).
| NAME | Team | Percentage increase |
|---|---|---|
Jeff Mittie | 132.26% | |
Brandon Schneider | 95.71% | |
Bill Fennelly | 87.50% | |
Jennie Baranczyk | 80% | |
JR Payne | 73.40% | |
Teri Moren | 68.75% | |
Dawn Staley | 57.65% | |
Amy Williams | 55.56% | |
Charmin Smith | 47.76% | |
Cori Close | 46.20% | |
Brenda Frese | 37.37% | |
Katie Gearlds | 34.58% | |
Vic Schaefer | 27.78% | |
Kim Mulkey | 26.91% | |
Wes Moore | 24.02% | |
Geno Auriemma | 22.07% | |
Jeff Walz | 21.31% | |
Kim Barnes Arico | 21.11% | |
Courtney Banghart | 19.05% | |
Kevin McGuff | 13.31% | |
Kelly Graves | 12.20% | |
Tina Langley | 10.31% | |
Krista Gerlich | 10.10% |
*This analysis doesn’t include Ole Miss salary or contract data due to Mississippi’s FOIA laws.
Coaches who moved from one power conference job to another because they were pursued (rather than being fired) during the past five years saw percentage increases on average more than coaches who remained in their jobs. Texas A&M pursued Joni Taylor hard and her salary has gone up 88 percent since 2022 to $1.6 million while Kenny Brooks’ move to Kentucky has proved financially lucrative. His salary more than doubled when he relocated from Virginia Tech, earning him $1.4 million this year. Minnesota’s Dawn Plitzuweit’s 2021-22 salary at West Virginia was worth roughly $550,000 and after making the move to the Gophers in 2023 (and signing an extension in 2025), Plitzuweit’s salary increased by 64 percent to $900,000 this year.
Staley said she has heard from many people inside of and outside of women’s basketball about how she has impacted their own negotiations and conversations around salary. She said those conversations are very meaningful to her, adding, “If that’s my role, to allow women’s (basketball) coaches to make more money, then that’s probably my calling.”
“I’ve heard from other coaches. I’ve heard from people in different professions. Because it’s really hard to know your worth. It’s hard to take whatever someone’s offering you when your counterpart is making 10 times more than you. It’s really, really unfair when it comes to that,” Staley told The Athletic. “And if you can express what your worth is and be able to do so in a way that it can impact it for elevation, you do it.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
South Carolina Gamecocks, Sports Business, Women's College Basketball
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