Arizona’s basketball department made some financial news in the spring of 2007 when it paid Kevin O’Neill $375,000 to be Lute Olson’s assistant coach. At the time, O’Neill was believed to be the highest-paid assistant coach in college basketball history.
Now Arizona is paying ex-Washington coach Lorenzo Romar $400,000 to be Sean Miller‘s assistant, and the salary market for assistant coaches has gone past the O’Neill-Romar level.
Kentucky pays assistant coach Kenny Payne $775,000. Louisville’s Kenny Johnson has a $550,000 per-year contract.
Irony: After UCLA won the 1995 Final Four, the Bruins gave Romar a contract worth $110,000 per year, which made him the league’s highest-paid assistant at a time Arizona assistants were being paid $70,000.
There are almost no similarities between the fractious O’Neill of 2007 and affable Romar of 2017. O’Neill was hired to extend Olson’s career; Romar was hired to enhance Miller’s career.
Over the last 25 years, only three long-tenured Division I head coaches re-entered the game as an assistant: Purdue’s Gene Keady served on Steve Lavin‘s staff at St. John’s; New Mexico’s Gary Colson helped Lou Campanelli at Cal; and Utah’s Lynn Archilbald joined Bill Frieder‘s operation at Arizona State.
All three of those men — Campanelli, Frieder and Lavin — were soon fired. Don’t expect that to happen with the Romar/Miller enterprise.
