Colleges keep running up the score on coaches' pay.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: SPORTS SECTION

When Terry Holland coached basketball at the University of Virginia from 1974 to 1990, he ran a summer camp and started a television show to make a little money on the side. He also negotiated a team shoe contract--a small one, he says--to pay for things he thought his program needed. Even with the extras, Holland estimates his annual compensation at Virginia hovered around $170,000.

Times have changed. Athletic-department budgets are bigger, and so are coaches' salaries. Holland sits on the other side of the negotiating table now as East Carolina University's athletic director. Basketball and football coaches at major colleges often receive compensation packages valued in the high six figures or more.

In May, N.C. State hired Sidney Lowe to replace Herb Sendek as its basketball coach. Sendek made about $900,000 a year and led the Wolfpack to a school-best five consecutive appearances in the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament. He left for Arizona State University because of a perceived lack of fan support--and for $400,000 more a year. Lowe, a former Wolfpack player with no college coaching experience and a dismal 79-228 record as a head coach in the National Basketball Association, accepted the job for total compensation of about $900,000, the same as Sendek.

Although published reports stated that two earlier candidates rejected offers of as much as $2 million, Athletic Director Lee Fowler says he had hoped to find a coach for about $800,000 to $1.2 million. Still, Fowler sees an end to the rapid escalation. "It will slow down. I'm not saying that the guy who wins a national championship will [see his pay] slow down, but all athletic departments are getting to the point where they are maximizing revenue and ticket prices."

Even at $900,000--more than double what Erskine Bowles makes as president of the UNC system and nearly three times the salary of N.C. State Chancellor James Oblinger--the school isn't paying top dollar. At UNC Chapel Hill, Roy Williams has a pay package near $1.6 million. Duke's Mike Krzyzewski makes about $1.5 million. Wake Forest's Skip Prosser makes $1 million.

Coaches' salaries are rising because of the huge revenue streams they generate for universities and the goodwill they engender with alumni and fans--potential donors to their schools. That's where Sendek fell short, in part because the Wolfpack rarely beat Carolina or Duke. Lowe excites N.C. State followers because of his link to the Wolfpack's...