Who is the best college basketball coach in the country for the money? The calculations have been made and the results are somewhat surprising. When it comes to a school’s return on investment in basketball, the top three best college basketball coaches are: #1 Gonzaga University's Mark Few, #2 Syracuse University's Jim Boeheim and #3 San Diego State University's Steve Fisher. Each of them are legends in their own right, and have helped their programs become mainstays of March Madness and the upper echelons of college basketball's elite.
Mark Few has helped Gonzaga, a small private school in Spokane, Washington, become a household name. The original Cinderella, Gonzaga has been to an unprecedented 15 straight NCAA Tournaments under Few's leadership, making them the most successful non-power conference college basketball program in modern history. The Bulldogs have become the model for consistency at a high level for all of collegiate and professional sports.
Considered one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time, Jim Boeheim has been at the helm of Syracuse University of almost 40 years. During that time, he helped take a school with little basketball history and turn it into one of winningest programs of all time. The Orange have been to an astounding 31 NCAA Tournaments, including multiple Final 4's and captured the 2003 national championship.
Steve Fisher, who took the University of Michigan to three national championship games in the early 90's, has helped San Diego State become one of the top west coast college basketball programs over the last decade. Five straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including two Sweet 16's, have proven that Fisher has the magic touch when it comes to revitalizing programs who have had little success on the hardwood.
Surprisingly, coaches from the “big five” power conferences do not dominate the list, but do include the likes of: Connecticut's Kevin Ollie (#7), Iowa State's Fred Hoiberg (#10), Arizona's Sean Miller (#11), Louisville's Rick Pitino (#13), North Carolina's Roy Williams (#18), and Cincinnati's Mick Cronin (#25). Conversely, the Mid-Major conferences are strongly represented by the likes of: Middle Tennessee State's Kermit Davis (#4), Wichita State's Gregg Marshall (#8), and Bucknell's Dave Paulsen (#9), among many others.
Ranking the quality of a team is never easy. Ranking the quality of a coach is even harder. There are so many factors that go into determining what exactly makes a good coach: wins and losses, recruiting success, overall football knowledge, the list goes on and on. What is most important to remember is that while a coach may excel at any number of these traits, history has shown that they certainly are not irreplaceable.
In compiling this list, we concluded that the best way to rank a coach relative to his peers is not just based on the number of wins and loses alone but the strength of those wins, as well as how much a coach wins and losses as compared to his salary and the total resources he has. The two variables used in the calculation are as follows:
Rating Percentage Index (RPI) Win Percentage – Acknowledging that not all 20 win seasons are made equal, this measure uses each team’s RPI win average for the 2012 and 2013 seasons to capture differences in the strength of schedule for each team. A team’s RPI win percentage for a season is calculated by multiplying its actual win percentage by the ratio between its RPI number for that season and the average RPI number for every team in the dataset.
Coach’s Share of Basketball Expenses – A variable that captures exactly what it says, the percentage of a team’s basketball expenses that is allocated to the coach’s salary.
For each of these variables, a corresponding measure was constructed to calculate how many standard deviations away from the mean it fell. This is meant to quantify just how much greater or less each school/coach/team was compared to the average school/coach/team in the data-set.
While each team has different budgets from which they can allocate salaries to coaches, this difference can be somewhat neutralized by considering instead the share of basketball expenses allocated to the coach. A more cost effective coach would be paid a relatively smaller share of his school’s basketball expenses as compared to his peers, while providing a better winning percentage, as adjusted by the RPI number.
Using the most recent full season data sets available (2011-12 and 2012-13), a coach had to satisfy two basic criteria to make the list: 1) He was still coaching at the university this season, and 2) had to a non-losing record (.500 or above) during both seasons. The first criteria provides for consistency, the second sets a minimum threshold that insures that the coaches were not simply “one-hit-wonders”.
Jason Belzer is Founder of GAME, Inc. and a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Sports Law at Rutgers University. Follow him on Twitter @JasonBelzer.
