To see how far Auburn basketball has come in a decade at a school predominantly known for football, there’s orange occupying the stands of Bridgestone Arena on Sunday in Nashville. Not Tennessee orange. Auburn orange.
It’s a sight that a decade ago maybe was so far-fetched that it was limited to a fan’s dream.
In 2024, it’s a reality. Auburn lifted a trophy on Sunday and enters the NCAA Tournament as a trendy pick to advance to the Final Four in an immensely difficult region. Auburn has among the top 10 best odds to win the national championship this year.
How did Auburn get here? To go from a perennial bottom feeder in a sport it hardly cared about to four total SEC titles under one coach since 2018?
Auburn invested. Investment built wins. Wins built another champion under Pearl.
During its golden age of men’s basketball, Auburn is spending in record numbers.
Since Auburn found a first taste of true national success with the 2019 run to the Final Four, Auburn has continued to elevate its costs to maintain a winner.
According to several years’ worth of Auburn budget reports acquired by AL.com through a public records request, Auburn has continually set record expense totals in men’s basketball including setting records at the time in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023.
Auburn’s spending declined in the 2021 fiscal year due to the COVID-19-related athletics shutdowns before returning to its pre-pandemic trend.
Every year Auburn continues to make a larger financial commitment to remain relevant at a sport it lacks history in.
It’s shown in the money Auburn is willing to pay its staff.
Head coach Bruce Pearl received a raise and an extension as part of his contract signed on May 1, 2022, according to a copy of his contract acquired by AL.com via a public records request. It would keep him at Auburn through 2030. It would make him the fourth highest-paid coach in America, according to USA Today’s coaches salaries database.
That resource lists Pearl’s 2024 salary at $5,716,652 including raises built into his contract and performance bonuses.
That’s more than national-championship-winning coaches Scott Drew at Baylor, Tony Bennett at Virginia and Dan Hurley at UConn. The only three coaches paid more than Pearl are Kansas’ Bill Self, Kentucky’s John Calipari and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo.
Pearl is on track to become the winningest coach in Auburn men’s basketball history. Paying him among the highest of any coach in America is the top dollar it takes to ensure he remains here and emphasizes Auburn’s commitment to being a contending program.
But it takes more than Pearl. Auburn is spending record sums on the total staff around him too.
According to copies of their contracts acquired by AL.com, Auburn either signed, extended or gave a raise to all five of its assistant coaches since May 2022.
In 2018, Auburn spent $3,685,718 total on basketball coach salaries. Then, that was a record high. In 2023, it spent $7,303,740. It’s a trend that continued upward at a similar rate as the total expenses for the sport did.
That number will only go up again in the 2024 fiscal year should the coaches all stay to receive their performance bonuses for winning the SEC Tournament and however deep of a run the team makes in the NCAA Tournament.
To win SEC championships and make runs in March requires having more than just top coaching. It requires top players, too.
Auburn has had three Associated Press All-Americans in the last three years. Incoming freshman guard Tahaad Pettiford was selected as a high school McDonald’s All-American this year. He’s the fourth Auburn recruit to receive that award.
All of them have come since 2021.
To compete for talent like that, Auburn has to spend like the blue bloods of the sport.
Few expenditures at Auburn have increased like its recruiting budget. Auburn has had an increase of more than 400% in its basketball recruiting spending from 2018 to 2023.
Auburn’s 2018 basketball recruiting costs totaled $79,837.
In 2023, Auburn spent $434,217.
Those sums are purely what the athletic department is spending on various recruiting costs including official visits. It does not include NIL deals with recruits — but Auburn is certainly able to compete financially there, too.
It’s spending that Auburn hopes puts it on an equal playing field for top talent.
It’s all spending Auburn has made because it decided to make basketball a priority.
And that’s paying off with victories. Auburn fifth year forward Jaylin Williams is the winningest player in Auburn’s history. Williams is a regular season SEC champ in 2022 and an SEC Tournament winner this year. He came to Auburn in the fall after its trip to the Final Four. His five-year run has been arguably the best in the history of the program.
The money spent is leading to a record revenue, too.
The money Auburn is putting into men’s basketball to ensure its success is returning in the form of ticket sales and contributions to the program. The money Auburn is putting into men’s basketball drives fan interest for a quite simple reason: fans want to see their team win. It’s winning now.
Auburn’s basketball revenue took a larger hit during the COVID-19 pandemic than its spending did — which was the case for nearly every college athletic department in America.
But the money Auburn has brought in from 2018 to 2023 has increased by nearly $8 million. Auburn had $11,215,902 in men’s basketball revenue for the 2018 fiscal year and $19,199,984 in 2023.
Auburn’s ticket sales numbers have been more inconsistent during this five-year period — ticket sales set a record in the 2022 fiscal year before declining in 2023 — but the program is continuing to see records in contributions and donations.
Men’s basketball totals dipped below $3 million per year during the pandemic but have risen back up to more than $5.2 million in 2023.
Auburn is now making a sizeable surplus on basketball — $4.2 million in the 2023 fiscal year — which allows it to maintain record spending levels.
Matt Cohen covers sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at mcohen@al.com