Raft of raises, contract extensions reflects financial stabilization for Indiana Athletics

BLOOMINGTON – Across the last few months and without much noise, IU Athletics extended new contracts to a handful of coaches across its department.

Some included substantial raises. Most tacked years onto coaches’ terms, providing the job security that can contribute to effective recruiting and staffing. Collectively, they reflect a department edging closer to financial normal, after two years grappling with the fallout from COVID-19.

Among the coaches handed new or improved deals are:

>> Men’s soccer coach Todd Yeagley.

>> Women’s soccer coach Erwin Van Bennekom.

>> Swimming coach Ray Looze.

>> Diving coach Drew Johansen.

>> Women’s basketball coach Teri Moren.

>> Softball coach Shonda Stanton.

>> Baseball coach Jeff Mercer.

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In some cases, the coaches extended received noticeable pay increases.

Moren, for example, received $125,000 more in guaranteed income across the last academic year under the terms of her new deal than she would have under her previous contract. She also received a multiyear extension, her new contract now running through 2027 where her last deal would have expired in 2023.

Looze and Johansen, whose programs have been hugely successful in the Big Ten and in Olympic competition in recent years, each received raises. Looze is scheduled to make $330,000 in base salary in the coming academic year, $100,000 more than he made in 2019-20, while Johansen’s new salary of $122,626 is understood to be the largest handed to a diving coach at a public institution in the country.

In almost every case, coaches got the financial and competitive security of additional years added onto the end of their contracts.

Mercer, for example, tacked three years onto the end of his contract, which now expires in 2026. His previous deal, signed when IU hired him away from Wright State, would have expired next year. Like Moren, Stanton’s new contract runs through 2027, as does Van Bennekom’s updated deal. Yeagley’s contract now extends through 2028.

Most of these coaches would have been in line for extensions and/or pay bumps sooner, but the financial impact of the pandemic forced Indiana to delay renegotiations.

Across the last two years, IU Athletics has grappled with a deficit that eventually ran close to $25 million in COVID-related losses. In 2019-20, Indiana reported a dip in athletics revenues of nearly $6.7 million, after a decade and a half of steady growth. The bigger hit came in the fiscal year 2020-21, when the department reported total operating revenues of $78,083,857, down from a pre-pandemic high of $127,832,628 in the 2019 financial year.

Among numerous steps taken to mitigate those losses were a series of furloughs impacting all department staff, plus the elimination of more than 30 full-time positions.

In that climate, IU elected to delay a number of contract negotiations or renegotiations. It handed football coach Tom Allen a hefty raise following the Hoosiers’ successful 2020 season but reduced his annual compensation a year later to cover the cost of firing former offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan. And while the move from Archie Miller to Mike Woodson required a buyout north of $10 million, Athletics Director Scott Dolson funded the termination of Miller’s contract through a single, private donation, while Woodson actually makes slightly less per year than Indiana had been committed to paying Miller.

This fresh round of extensions and raises, which have been implemented across the course of the last two years but accelerated in the first half of 2022, reflect needed financial stabilization.

During the academic year concluding at the end of this month, Indiana returned to full-capacity attendance for all indoor and outdoor sporting events, filling the largest hole in its COVID-year deficit, ticket sales.

For the same reasons, conference distributions should stabilize this fiscal year. Truncated football and men’s basketball seasons in 2020-21 contributed to a noticeable dip in revenue the Big Ten dispersed to its members, likely due to reduced payouts from broadcast partners. With full schedules in both sports again, the financial benefit was felt across the conference.

In fact, all 14 Big Ten athletic departments will know their financial futures are likely not just secure, but more robust than they were pre-COVID.

The conference’s current television deal — which gathers $440 million annually from Fox, ESPN/ABC and CBS — expires next year. While the league doesn’t publicize down-to-the-dollar figures, annual revenues from the Big Ten Network are understood to climb comfortably above $100 million as well.

A recent report from the Sports Business Journal suggested the television rights package currently being negotiated, coupled to BTN revenues, could see the Big Ten’s annual media intake push toward $1 billion. Resolution of negotiations is expected sometime this year.

Such a significant spike in annual revenues would not only help alleviate conference athletic departments’ post-COVID deficits. It could wipe them out altogether in just a few years.

In the meantime, as finances stabilize and the long-term outlook continues to improve, departments around the Big Ten can begin operating once more with a certainty they have not known since 2019. That reality is reflected in numerous ways at IU, not least with a raft of extensions and raises that had been delayed by the pandemic but are now on the books.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Yeagley, Mercer, Moren extensions show finances improving