Oklahoma State Hoops: What’s Next for the Lowest-Paid Coach in the Big 12?

I got a provocative question via email from reader Derrick S. this week about Mike Boynton and Oklahoma State. Here it is.

Just heard that Pitt was looking at Frank Martin as a possible candidate for their HC job. Which would in turn open the South Carolina job. Wonder who would be on their short list that is overachieving and underpaid as of right now? Maybe a topic, maybe not? Just a thought.

I have no idea if Frank Martin is a candidate at Pittsburgh, but what I do know is that Eddie Fogler — yeah the same Eddie Fogler OSU paid during the hiring of Mike Boynton and the same Eddie Fogler who recruited Mike Boynton as a high school senior to South Carolina and coached him as a freshman — is involved in the Pitt hiring process.

So maybe the better question is not whether Pitt is interested in Frank Martin which could make South Carolina interested in Mike Boynton. But rather whether Pitt is interested in Mike Boynton.

In December (finally), Boynton signed a five-year contract worth $6 million with Oklahoma State. Bill Self, by contrast, will make nearly that much in 2018. I should remind you that Boynton went 2-1 against Bill Self this year.

So all of a sudden Mike Holder finds himself in roughly the same situation he did last year. OSU ends the season on a disappointing note, but there is clearly some momentum for 2019 and beyond and an infatuation between a fan base, a coach and a building (the holy triumvirate of success in college hoops).

Has Boynton earned a raise based on achieving an expected level of success? I would argue no — I think the baseline for a program like Oklahoma State is getting to the Round of 32 on average, annually. But Holder is somewhat ironically in a position he tried to avoid last year where he has to pay a coach on what’s projected and not on what they’ve actually done.

These things move fast (we saw that last year), and there might need to be a philosophical change at the highest level when it comes to retaining employees and building a program. The difficulty here for OSU, and I totally understand this, is that we as fans are all sort of overstating what happened this season. OSU was a No. 2 seed in the NIT. Not the NCAAs, the NIT. That’s not great, but it might be really good based on what Boynton was working with.

It’s all an arbitrary judgement call, and the game of cat and mouse doesn’t end.

Being in the Big 12 doesn’t make it easy for OSU. When Chris Beard gets a monster raise this offseason, Boynton, slated to make $1.1 million next year will be the lowest-paid coach in the Big 12 by almost half of what the next-lowest paid coach is making.

And he just finished tied for sixth in the toughest league in the country with a lowly roster that he didn’t have a chance to create. He has engendered a supreme loyalty from his players and has talked repeatedly of hanging banners. That talk hasn’t been empty, either. Boynton helped OSU set a school record for wins against top 10 teams. There were flashes of brilliance, even if the final product fell a little bit short of its goal. On the flip side of this, he hasn’t really landed any recruits, has dealt with a FBI scandal for part of the year and was a few buckets away from going, like, 4-14 in league play. That’s probably an unfair game to play, but this is an unfair world with preposterously small margins and lots of dollars at stake.

Ultimately I think Holder will pull the trigger on paying Boynton this offseason in a way he didn’t with Underwood. I have talked to people associated with the program who have insinuated that Underwood was allowed to walk for reasons that have nothing to do with money. World view and philosophical reasons. I don’t know how much truth there is to that, but Boynton and Underwood are certainly wired differently.

In a 364-day twist that I did not see coming, it’s suddenly Boynton that has a lot of leverage. Last year, when he was hired on March 24, OSU could have paid him the interest earned on Mike Gundy’s checking account every month, and he probably would have taken it.

This year, with jobs like Pitt and Louisville sure to start swinging the coaching carousel and a young, impressive, underpaid African-American head coach coming off a season in which he won five games against Sweet 16 teams, yeah … who has leverage now?

Mike Boynton asked if he plans on being back next year: "I have not talked to anybody else about a job. I'll say that. Mike Holder was the guy who gave me this opportunity. … At 35 years old, it means a lot to me. My family's very happy here."

— Mark Cooper (@mark_cooperjr) March 22, 2018

It’s important to remember, too, that for all the lauding of GIA and Stillwater Boynton has done, there’s no escalator like the college hoops coaching escalator. Stillwater becomes a lot less quaint when somebody in Pennsylvania or Florida or wherever is going to double your salary and your ties to Oklahoma are only two years old.

Of course both Boynton and Holder know this, and I suspect we will see them reach a reasonable agreement this offseason in which Boynton gets a new five-year, $9 million deal, something of this nature.

• 2018-19: $1.5 million
• 2019-20: $1.6 million
• 2020-21: $1.7 million
• 2021-22: $1.9 million
• 2022-23: $2.1 million

If he goes to, say, the Sweet 16 next year, then you can really start talking. I have no idea if this is what will happen, and I could be way off. He could get far more than this or far less. Holder started with a $1 million anchor, and the friction here is that he probably didn’t earn a doubling of his salary, but do you really want to employ the lowest-paid coach in the Big 12?

Such is life in the big money world of college athletics, and if you don’t keep up, at some point you’re pointing at Boone Pickens Stadium and telling your fans, “that’s all we really care about.”