Miller's salary: A perspective

Arguably one reason why Penn hesitated to fire Glen Miller is that his contract runs through the end of the 2010-11 season. Athletic Director Steve Bilsky would not comment on the financial implications of Miller's departing, saying in his media teleconference:

As you can imagine, I’m not going to get into that other than that I care about Glen, I want him to be successful going forward. In personnel maters, I really just can’t say much about that.

Many readers of this blog, too, have wondered about the bottom-line impacts of Miller and his potential succesors. (After all, assuming Miller is paid the remainder of his contract, as is customary, then Penn will be paying two head coaches next season.) So how big a deal is it?

We do not know the terms of the five-year contract that Miller signed in 2006, since that information is not public. But we can guess.

Here are some facts:

In 2008-09, the average salary of a head coach of a Penn men's team was $82,025. Obviously, the basketball coach will be one of the highest-paid coaches on campus.
In 2008-09, the men's basketball team had operating expenses of $190,889 and total expenses of $914,602. (Revenues were $928,509, by the way, meaning that the program was profitable).
Fran Dunphy was reportedly paid roughly $300,000 per season when he left Penn. Miller almost definitely made less than Dunphy, who spent 17 years with the Quakers.

So, ballparking it, that leaves us around $100,000 - $225,000.

That's no petty sum, accounting for 10-25% of men's hoops expenses and allowing for a comfortable lifestyle. But it's also a small price to pay for getting the program back on track sooner.