Mike Boynton Calls One of Big 12’s Lowest-Paid ADs, Mike Holder, a ‘Visionary’

According to this survey by SpencerFane, Mike Holder is the 49th-highest paid athletic director in the country. At just under $650,000 a year in compensation, he’s probably not buying bulk pasta at Wal-Mart, but for the work he’s done in Stillwater it’s conceivable that he’s fairly underpaid.

Here are your Big 12 ADs in order of compensation (including bonuses).

Big 12 AD Compensation

I know a lot of people don’t like Holder, but I’ve long been an apologist. It’s difficult to argue against the man responsible for engineering what amounts to a golden era of athletics in Stillwater. It’s not ultimate, but OSU finished last year in the top 30 of the Learfield Directors’ Cup, just behind Alabama, just ahead of Auburn. They’re currently poised to do so again this year.

They’ve been in the top 30 in each of the past five years. In the five years leading up to Holder taking over (2001-2005), OSU did not have a single top 30 appearance in these standings. The athletics program in Stillwater is objectively in a better place than it was when he took it.

We get very football-centric at times, both personally and on this site, but when you look outside of that bubble and see the success baseball, tennis, golf and cross country are having — not to mention the facilities Holder has presided over building — it’s not difficult to see how impactful his reach has been. If the argument is “well, he’s just tight with Boone Pickens,” the rebuttal is, “well … yeah.”

Anyway, we talked to Mike Boynton about Holder a few weeks ago, and Boynton stumped for the man who gave him a dream job at the age of 35.

“Coach Holder has helped me in pretty much every step of this journey so far,” said Boynton. “In terms of being sort of a mentor, really. He walked these shoes. He did it for himself in a different sport and under different circumstances. But him being a coach is maybe his greatest strength for me because he understands the dynamics of recruiting. He understands the dynamics of trying to build some momentum for your program. He’s been a great help.”

I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that before Holder became a really good AD, he was one of the best coaches in college sports history. Twenty-five conference titles, eight national titles. He was the ? before emojis existed.

“We work for great people,” added Boynton. “Coach Holder has been unbelievable. He was the champion of this thing. He was a visionary behind all this. There were some people on the board who were supportive as well, but he was the first person to identify this as an option. There’s a lot of appreciation and respect for him taking a chance on us.”

Boynton is not the only coach at OSU with that story, but his might be the most extreme example. If you watched the basketball season and have followed recruiting, it’s clear that, despite a possibly-flawed decision-making process, Holder landed somebody clearly capable of guiding a program to greatness. Maybe he should get all the credit for that, maybe not. But it’s clear that one of the lowest-paid ADs in the Big 12 became a visionary in Stillwater, and hopefully he’ll have as much success passing that torch into the future as he’s had carrying it for the past 15 years.