By Nate West
News Editor
“I haven’t won a game for 25 years, the players win the games. I just coach.”
That’s what men’s basketball Head Coach Mark Schmidt says he tells people. It’s just the opposite, however. He’s actually won 163 games as a head coach and people have noticed. Forbes.com named Schmidt the “best coach for the money” in a Jan. 28 article.
“It’s an honor, it’s a privilege but I didn’t do it – the team did it,” Schmidt said. “In my opinion, it’s a team award, a team recognition.”
Schmidt said he wasn’t alerted by either Forbes or the university. He had been recruiting Monday and when he got off the plane, he had around 15 text messages congratulating him, he said.
Forbes’ method of determining the award is more than looking at who has the best record, according to Forbes.com. Instead, they developed a “cost-per-win” formula based on how much a coach wins and loses compared to the resources available. It then divides the number of wins against D-1 opponents during the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 seasons by the school’s budget for each year.
“This creates an equation in which the variable numerator among coaches, resources, is divided over a constant denominator, wins and losses against the same pool of competition,” Jason Belzer, creator of the formula, said in the article.
Schmidt’s cost-per-win came in at $88,467. He was the only coach to come in under $100,000. St. Bonaventure also had the lowest total budget in the conference.
“When I first took the job, I knew there were limitations,” Schmidt said. “We weren’t going to have everything, but at a place like Bonaventure, you can’t look at what you don’t have, you have to look at what you have. We try and make do with what we have, and stay away from the negatives.”
Schmidt finished ahead of two other Atlantic 10 coaches: Fran Dunphy of Temple (#2) and Chris Mack of Xavier (#7). Schmidt says that the A-10 has great coaches, and this shows that no team in the conference needs to take a backseat to anybody.
There are more than 340 schools at the Division 1 level, which creates a large difference between the budgets of every school. For that reason, there are two rankings: “Mid-Major” schools and “High-Major” schools where Bonaventure falls. The average budget for Mid-Major schools is $1,247,808, which is just barely a quarter of the average of the High-Major schools, according to the same article. The difference between the highest cost-per-win on both levels is more than 300 percent.
Schmidt says if the players hadn’t kept improving on their record every year and kept developing, there would be no recognition.
“It’s all the players,” he said. “I’ve said it all the time, ‘You’ve never seen a good team with bad players.’ A coach can only do so much, but the players are the ones who bring success to the program.”
The list included names like Roy Williams of North Carolina, Thad Matta of Ohio State and John Beilein of Michigan. Schmidt said it’s an honor to have his name mentioned with “legends.”
Schmidt also added that this recognition doesn’t change anything about his approach to the game.
“I don’t look at it as ‘I made X amount of dollars so I have to work harder or not as hard,’” Schmidt said. “We just try to win games. When the contract is done, you move on. I don’t coach looking at what I get per game or per year. I love coaching and I’m glad I’m getting paid for it.”
