In June 2000, it was announced that Lute Olson was Arizona's highest-paid state employee. His base salary was $562,230, a few dollars more than renowned UA heart surgeon Jack Copeland, who was paid $561,446.
UA president Peter Likins? He was paid $195,000.
However, UA athletic director Jim Livengood told me that Olson's total compensation package was closer to $1.2 million, which made sense. Olson was then one of the nation's three or four leading college basketball coaches. Kentucky's Rick Pitino was the highest paid at $2.2 million.
Olson had come a long way from his first Arizona contract in 1983, in which he was paid a $63,000 base salary, with about $40,000 more coming from TV, radio and apparel contracts.
Olson bought a nice home in the foothills and made enough money that when Kentucky offered him its basketball coaching job in 1989 — Olson's base salary was then $130,000, almost double his original deal six years earlier — he chose to remain in Tucson. UA athletic director Cedric Dempsey told me he induced Olson to stay in Tucson after 100 UA boosters agreed to pay $1,000 each in a Keep Lute Home campaign.
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Today, that $100,000, sweeten-the-pot bonus would be laughably small. I mean, Tommy Lloyd's new $7.19 million contract (for 2026-27) is worth $276,923 every two weeks.
Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd watches during practice ahead of a semifinal game against against Michigan at the Final Four, Friday, April 3, 2026, in Indianapolis.
Is this sustainable? Lloyd's $3 million-a-year-raise rubs out the money athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois created by selling naming rights to Arizona Stadium for $3 million a year over 20 years. That money was initially targeted to help Arizona compete in the NIL game. Now it must come up with money to buy a basketball roster elsewhere.
Compensation in college basketball is insanely out of control, and if you think it's insane now, check back at the 2050 Final Four. It's conceivable that the next Tommy Lloyd will then be getting paid $20 million a year, maybe more. Where does it stop? It probably doesn't.
What makes Lloyd's compensation package of about $19,726 per day so head-shaking is that UA president Suresh Garimella has a base salary of $810,000 with bonus clauses that can push his yearly compensation to about $1.2 million. He also is afforded the luxury of living in a UA-owned $1.3 million home in the near-campus Sam Hughes district.
But it is very likely that at least two or three Arizona basketball players this season were paid more than Garimella's annual salary.
It is fascinating to examine how, bit by bit, college football and basketball coaches have become valued more than university presidents and heart surgeons, and especially the coaches in non-revenue sports.
In 1989, Arizona State hired Michigan basketball coach Bill Frieder on the week the NCAA Tournament began. ASU's offer: $150,000 plus income from apparel and a radio-TV deal. Michigan went on to win the Final Four a few weeks later and then paid Frieder's assistant, Steve Fisher, a reported $175,000 a year to be the Wolverines head coach.
How times change.
When Frieder was fired in 1998, ASU hired Ole Miss coach Rob Evans. To help lure Evans to Tempe, the Sun Devils guaranteed him a $5 bonus for every season ticket sold. Given ASU's lack of fan support, that couldn't have been more than $20,000. But that was also 28 years ago.
When Arizona Hall of Fame baseball coach Jerry Kindall retired in 1993, having led the Wildcats to three national championships, his salary was $80,000. Today, UA baseball coach Chip Hale has a base salary of $528,000.
When Joan Bonvicini coached Arizona's women's basketball team to seven NCAA Tournaments as Arizona's head coach, the base salary of her final season, 2008, was $139,000. A year ago, Bonvicini's best-ever UA player, Adia Barnes, was paid $1.2 million to be Arizona's head coach.
In the how-times-change department, the most emotional UA coach lost in a money war was football's Larry Smith, who jumped to USC in 1987. Smith's base salary at Arizona was $87,500. State rules at the time didn't allow Smith, or any coach, to receive a multi-year contract. He went to the Rose Bowl-rich Trojans for an estimated $150,000 a year over four seasons.
Smith had no choice but to jump from Arizona to USC. Last week, Lloyd had about $35 million reasons to remain a Wildcat. By the time he leaves or retires, let's say 2040 or thereabouts, the price to employ the basketball coach of a Top 10 program is likely to be $20 million a year.
Can you imagine what it will cost to buy a season ticket in 2040 at McKale Center? Today's $15 beer at McKale basketball games will probably be $40 in the year 2040. Only then will UA basketball followers look back at 2026 and think it was a time of fiscal sanity and restraint.
With new agreement, Tommy Lloyd hopes to keep Arizona men's basketball humming
