The cost of winning: Kansas State AD Gene Taylor faces new challenge after dream year
Gene Taylor didn’t know how to answer the question.
What was your favorite moment from an athletic year that saw Kansas State win a Big 12 championship in football and then reach the Elite Eight in men’s basketball?
“That’s a tough one,” Taylor said during an interview last week.
You know things are going well on campus when the athletic director needs time to pick and choose between so many highlight moments ... and he ultimately selects a handful of them instead of just one.
“There were so many,” Taylor said. “The way we beat TCU for the Big 12 championship in football was phenomenal. You can’t ask for a more exciting game. But I think the Michigan State game to get to the Elite Eight was so good that you didn’t have to be a K-State fan to enjoy it. It was just a fun basketball game.
“We beat Kentucky right before that, a pair of blue bloods back-to-back. Those ones pop out to me, but then we also beat KU at home in basketball and we won so many big games to get the Big 12 championship in football. It was all pretty impressive.”
Things went so swimmingly for the Wildcats during the past athletic year that it has produced a new challenge for Taylor as K-State works to duplicate this kind of success in the future.
Now that the dust has settled on a memorable year that featured 10 victories in football and 26 wins in men’s basketball, the Wildcats need to figure out how to afford all this winning.
The cost of winning
K-State coaches have never ranked at the top of the Big 12 in terms of salary. Typically, they are near the middle. Chris Klieman’s salary of $3.6 million for 2023 was the highest the Wildcats have ever paid a football coach. And it ranked fifth (at best) in the Big 12 last season. Remember, Baylor and TCU don’t disclose their coach salaries as private schools.
Jerome Tang earned $2.1 million this past season as a first-time head coach. That number ranked ninth in the conference.
It goes without saying that those numbers will rise significantly in the coming months when K-State rewards both Klieman and Tang with bigger contracts.
“The market has changed,” Taylor said. “Successful coaches that win Big 12 championships and get to the Elite Eight need to be compensated in a fair market within reason. How do we come up with that extra money? Let’s just say it keeps my CFO awake at night.”
Taylor went on to say, “we need to find every revenue source we can” and mentioned a more lucrative apparel contract with NIKE in 2024 and beyond as a possibility.
K-State is off to a good start in that department, as season ticket sales for football have been robust. The Wildcats are also expecting to sell basketball tickets at a higher rate than they have in the past.
But the Wildcats will need more than that if they want to keep winning at this level. As long as schools like Texas, Oklahoma and just about everyone in the Big Ten/SEC can spend significantly more, well, it may be difficult for K-State to achieve staying power.
Taylor finalized new contracts with all of Klieman’s assistant coaches last week, and their combined salaries increased by nearly $1 million per year. K-State will also be under pressure to pay Klieman more than KU coach Lance Leipold ($5 million) and Tang more than Iowa State coach TJ Otzelberger ($2.5 million) next season. K-State may soon be spending more on both men’s basketball and football than it ever has before.
Conservatively, the Wildcats are about to add $3 million or more to their athletic budget.
That isn’t the easiest task for a school that was projected to spend $83.6 million on athletics in 2022-23. By comparison, Kansas reported $108 million in operating expenses in Fiscal Year 2022 and Texas has a yearly athletic budget of over $200 million.
For that reason, Taylor has begun encouraging K-State boosters (big and small) to donate to the athletic department’s Ahearn Fund so the Wildcats can increase their operational budget. His top fundraising goal at the moment is boosting funds for coach retention.
But K-State players are also looking for more money of their own through NIL deals. The fundraising market has never been more crowded.
“Most of our donors really understand the situation,” Taylor said. “Some of them are still paying off their facility gifts and they have said when that’s done they will look to donate more to the Ahearn Fund. They also ask where do we need their dollars. Do we need help with NIL or help with operational dollars? The answer is both. Most of them understand and have found ways to help us.”
Keeping up with the rest of the Big 12
Moving forward, Taylor wants K-State salaries at most positions throughout the athletic department to rank in the top half of the Big 12.
“We just want to stay competitive and do what makes sense for us,” he said. “We do look at the Big 12 across the board. It’s not just basketball and football. It’s everything. Where do we match up with the Big 12? In some cases, we are the bottom and our commitment to everybody is to at least get up in the other half.
“It is a factor when another school pays a little bit more and their coach hasn’t had as much success as ours has. You’re like, ‘Well, OK, that’s interesting. We probably need to look at this.’”
This raises an interesting hypothetical question.
Let’s say the K-State football team keeps winning Big 12 championships and positions itself as a conference power after Oklahoma and Texas depart for the SEC. Could the Wildcats realistically pay Klieman more than any other coach in the new Big 12?
Right now, that would mean topping the $7.5 million that Mike Gundy brings in every year at Oklahoma State.
“Possibly, I guess we could,” Klieman said. “There are some pretty big salaries out there. Those are some big numbers that we would really have to look at for us and our budget, at least today. There is a point where we may have to say this our top end. Hopefully that won’t come anytime soon and hopefully we can continue to keep these guys here.”
Taylor doesn’t expect that to be a problem.
Bottom line: K-State will find ways to reward its coaches if they keep winning, even though bigger schools will always be capable of paying more.
“Our guys really feel good about being at K-State,” Taylor said. “They know we aren’t going to pay millions of dollars over what we think we can pay. But we are going to make sure they get taken care of fairly.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "The cost of winning: Kansas State AD Gene Taylor faces new challenge after dream year."