UConn head coach Geno Auriemma shares a light moment with UConn Athletic Director David Benedict before an NCAA college basketball game between UConn and DePaul, Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025, in Storrs, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Jessica Hill/AP
STORRS — What’s an elite college basketball coach worth or entitled to? What should a Hall of Famer, or a future Hall of Famer, be paid?
UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma took home $4.18 million in 2025. UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley, in the same year, made $10.35 million.
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“I’m not going to argue with people on the merit or value that they see or don’t see,” UConn athletic director David Benedict said this week. “But I think trying to compare a coach like Geno Auriemma, who has been coaching over 40 years and has been loyal to this university, has had impact way beyond our ticket revenue to this university, the amount of contributions, the state support that has come to this university that has helped transform this university to what it is — to try to measure that, and draw a parallel from what he makes in his 42nd year to a freshman coming in that has never played college basketball, that’s not an appropriate comparison.”
Then there’s Hurley.
“This is his ninth season,” Benedict said. “He has won two championships, competed for a third, had spent many, many years [coaching] before he got to UConn, got to this level, and is being compensated for what he’s done, not just showing up. He wasn’t being paid what he is today when he first got here. How do you draw a comparison to someone who is just showing up, day one? I think that’s not reality or reasonable. And there are impacts that our coaches have that go way beyond just the revenue directly associated with their program. To say that [football coach] Nick Saban didn’t have a similar effect at the University of Alabama, in what he contributed that was totally outside of football — the numbers of students that they have going to school there now, the fundraising that has taken place — a lot of coaches transcend an impact that brings value well beyond the direct revenues that come from their sport.”
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This was well into a discussion about, basically, who should be paid what in a college athletics world reinventing itself. Many have opinions on solutions, including politicians. No one has simple answers.
The Protect College Sports Act moved through the U.S. Senate recently without an amendment (proposed by Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and New Jersey U.S. Sen. Cory Booker) that would have included a $5 million maximum salary for any coach. On the same day that was shot down, the bill itself advanced with a 77-22 vote. Next, it will be considered in the House of Representatives, sometime after the legislative session begins Nov. 9.
The dollar signs in college athletics continue to float around like flakes in a snow globe of confusion. Seemingly with the right intentions but only a loose grasp for what’s fair or feasible, politicians from both sides of the aisle have tried to rescue college sports from current-day chaos and work toward making sure everyone involved is compensated appropriately.
UConn Athletics Director David Benedict speaks prior to the introduction of Jason Candle as UConn?s new head football coach on Monday, December 8, 2025, at Rentschler Field.
Jim Michaud/Hearst Connecticut Media
There’s just so much gray area. Student-athletes aren’t employees. Nor are they, technically, compensated for performance. What’s the bottom-line value of a scholarship, to begin with? Should players have unlimited freedom of movement — one transfer after the next — or be beholden to the one-time transfer rule presented by the bill and the five seasons in five years structure now in place? The Protect College Sports Act establishes rules, and gives the NCAA power to enforce them, in areas such as eligibility, revenue-sharing, transfers, NIL (name, image and likeness) and more.
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Proponents of the bill — Hurley and Auriemma among them – argue that college athletics is increasingly built on an instability that only harms student-athletes and a coach’s ability to impact lives. That’s part of it, anyway.
Critics say it unfairly caps student-athletes’ earning potential while coaches are paid much more and free to leave their position for another. Again, that’s just part of it.
There’s enough packed into the bill, and enough going on in college sports, to go round and round on ifs and whys and pros and cons until you’re blue in the face. It’s not a perfect bill. But it’s better than nothing, Hurley and Auriemma — and many others — think.
I thought it important to get the views of Benedict, who has run the UConn athletic department for 10-plus years now, during the most turbulent times, with sweeping changes to the college sports landscape.
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“I would definitely echo the comments of our two basketball coaches,” he said.
So, Benedict is for the bill.
But he also understands why all it entails doesn’t meet the need and desire of every politician, every high-level football player, every rower, every high-level basketball player or every tennis player who might have different views.
“The thing that is most surprising to me about some of the opposition — and it’s not that I don’t appreciate the opposition’s view, because I do — is that, I think, unfortunately, no one is really listening to each other,” Benedict said. “They just want to offer their perspective. But I do think the position of the coaches, you have to listen to what they’re saying. Because they are the ones dealing with, directly, day to day, with the athletes. The thing that is very different about college athletics is we’re dealing with very young people, still. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be able to make a lot of money, or whatever the other side of this is saying. If we’re left with the current structure, where you have unmitigated free agency — and it is, without question — just look at the numbers of transfers and how that continues to increase. We’ve gotten to a place where, for a certain percentage of our athletes, whether it’s their perspective of that of those advising them, it’s just about how much money they can make.
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“People outside of college athletics, that’s how they operate, and I’m not here to say that is wrong. But I’m not sure it is, for the general student-athlete — we have close to 600 — you’re creating an environment where I think the notion is, it can be better to just transfer every year for various reasons, one being compensation or one being you’re not getting enough playing time. I’m not sure, long term, that is necessarily going to contribute to helping young people have a foundation for how to be successful in life.”
David Benedict UConn Director of Athletics UConn introduces their new head football coach Jason Candle at Rentschler Field in East Hartford on December 8, 2025 (Tyler Russell/Connecticut Public via Getty Images)
Connecticut Public Broadcasting/Connecticut Public Broadcasting
Benedict noted that graduation rates drop precipitously among student-athletes who transfer more than once. We’re in an era now where every player in potentially lucrative positions — a roster spot on any high-revenue team, say football and men’s basketball at most universities — is motivated to annually reconsider their college experience. A quarterback might perform well at School A and realize School B will double his revenue-sharing salary. In basketball, where needs are very specific and teams can afford to overpay, players from up and down every rotation will have offseason options.
“You get done with the championship game and, literally the next day, you’re dealing with every one of the kids coming in and saying, ‘Well, what are you paying me?’” Benedict said.
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Opponents of the bill want student-athletes to have freedom of movement, with no limits. The bill is supported overwhelmingly by Republicans and supported by a majority of Democrats, but it’s more evenly split on the left. It’s a very politically-driven conversation, particularly because it gained traction in March with President Donald Trump gathering dozens of college leaders at the White House for a roundtable discussion. The bipartisan Protect College Sports Act was introduced soon after by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). Murphy, a Democrat, has been an outspoken critic.
“I am very much independent in my political views,” Benedict said. “I try to be very open-minded about things. But trying to understand the contrast in the approach from some of the messaging — not all, but some of the messaging — that you hear from the Democratic party with respect to this, it seems very contradictory to me in certain ways that, at least in my interpretation that may not be shared by everybody, there’s an approach that, at least the way I interpret the things that I hear, is they’re very much in support of protecting the top one percent.”
Benedict’s job and the goals of his department are heavily intertwined with support from the State Capitol and many politicians.
“Democratic values and philosophy in the way that I interpret them, I’m not saying I agree or disagree, I’m just saying the way I interpret, philosophically, most Democratic approaches, it is not to protect the one percent,” he said. “And very much so, what I hear — maybe it’s not being articulated, totally, the right way — but what I hear is messaging that ultimately, whether they truly understand it or not, is very much in favor of protecting the one percent and allocating as much, or more, to the top one percent.”
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Hurley has called the current structure in college sports “anti-coach.” What he means is that a coach’s ability to challenge, develop and guide young people is diminished. Rosters are being rebuilt. Recruiting 18-year-olds, in some programs, has taken a back seat to plucking experienced players from the transfer portal. The bill does allow for an unquestioned and unchallenged transfer, and for payment, but not an ability to seek out a different “employer” every single year.
Players, already, are leaving college without debt and some are leaving having made a lot of money on top of that. Maximizing earning potential, for some, means a college experience on the move, one campus to the next.
“I think there’s a real risk for people, downstream, in what your resume looks like when you send it to a potential employer and it shows you’ve been to three or four different places,” Benedict said. “Are they not going to interpret that as an individual that doesn’t really stick around? None of that has anything to do with how much someone gets paid, so let’s separate that. But the conversation to me that goes on, at least publicly, from the opposition, is really focused on how much coaches are paid, their freedom of movement, and, Why should that look any different than a student-athlete’s? We’re focusing on a very small percentage of the overall.
“The Protect College Sports Act is a framework that I think can be beneficial to all parties. There’s a lack of appreciation on both sides of the argument. Set the politics aside. There’s a lack of appreciation. I’d love to have a conversation and have someone really explain to me how we can do this better, whether that be some sort of collective bargaining arrangement or some type of association where there’s negotiation, but I’m not sure people really understand.”
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College sports has essentially had amateurism pulled out of it, but it still is far different from professional leagues.
“How do you negotiate something when there’s such a disparate opportunity across Division I, FBS, to suggest this is an appropriate number for all?” Benedict said. “The one thing that is uniquely different to me about college sports than professional sports is so much of this is driven on the passion and emotion that is connected to your alumni base and support from your state and the pride they have, as opposed to this is just pure revenue we generate from a business or an asset. If you’re going to take that approach and it’s going to be purely negotiated based on your revenue, well, what is the play for programs that don’t make any money, that actually lose money?
“Sometimes people think, ‘Oh, you can pay coaches X and they can leave whenever they want and the same should be true for the student-athletes.’ I’m not sure, necessarily, you should be treating young people the same as professionals. There is a difference. But if you’re just talking about how you distribute revenues and you’re going to apply something, you should understand the context of how that applies to everybody, or you’re just applying that to one or two teams. Right now, I don’t know that that works in our system.”
Benedict mentioned one suggestion or existing train of thought, that paying college athletes should be done much differently than it is in, say, the NFL.
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“And you start to look at the true revenues in sports and the revenues distributed, I’m not sure, if you applied that across the board, that’s necessarily going to turn out the way you wanted it to,” he said. “For a handful of universities who are at the very highest level and are generating revenue in a totally different stratosphere, I can see where that type of thinking makes sense. But that’s a very, very small percentage of athletic departments. I’ve been saying for a long time, before NIL, I’m all for sharing. But I’m not sure there’s a total appreciation and understanding on what is going on behind the scenes. I’d be happy to bring people into that a little more intimately so they can see exactly how this system is actually working. Set the numbers aside, it’s very different than how you recruit a coach. You have a very defined market. There’s a lot of information that can be gleaned. There’s a lot of data you can use to inform yourself.
“We’re not allowed to compensate or share revenue with student-athletes for play. So how do you construct a contract around something that is not even directly associated with … if you want to say you’re sharing revenue that they create, they’re not creating it with their NIL. Let’s get real.”