NCAA bid pays off for WSU coach
Nagy receives $41,666 for leading Raiders into men’s tournament.
Wins for Wright State in the NCAA Tournament will translate into a bigger bonus for coach Scott Nagy.
The Raiders, seeded 14th, take on the No. 3-seeded Tennessee Volunteers at 12:40 p.m. today in Dallas in the second round of the tournament.
Like most schools, Wright State gives a bonus to its coach based on tournament success. Nagy, who was hired in 2016, has already qualified for a bonus by qualifying for the tournament.
Nagy’s base pay is $500,000 per year and the bonus he will receive for making the tournament is equal to one month’s salary, according to a copy of his contract. The bonus amounts to around $41,666.
If the Raiders upset Tennessee, Nagy will be awarded an additional $10,000 bonus and another $10,000 for every tournament win after that as well, according to his contract. Nagy also gets eight tickets to every NCAA Tournament game the Raiders play.
If Nagy’s Raiders were instead competing in the NIT, the coach would have received a bonus of just under $21,000.
“Scott Nagy was a proven winner when we hired him and he’s doing the same here
continued from B1 at Wright State in a very short amount of time. Any contractual benefits he’ll reap from his team’s success are well deserved,” WSU Athletic Director Bob Grant said in a prepared statement.
Nagy twice took South Dakota State to the NCAA Tournament.
Bonuses for good seasons are common incentives for college coaches. Former Dayton coach Archie Miller received a bonus of $894,867 in 2014, according to a 2015 form 990. That year the Flyers made it to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament.
Nagy will get his bonus at a time when Wright State has had to make steep budget cuts. In June, WSU trustees slashed more than $30.8 million from the university’s budget in an attempt to begin correcting years of overspending.
The university is trying to boost its reserve fund by at least $6 million this fiscal year. Unexpected costs and revenue streams not coming in as expected have posed a challenge, but administrators are still confident they will hit their financial targets.