Duke's Mike Krzyzewski Second Highest-Paid College Coach

Coach K finishes behind John Calipari

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was the second highest-paid coach in college basketball in 2017-18, according to tax documents acquired by USA Today this week.

Coach K reportedly earned $7,256,924 in salary and bonus money that year, according to the paper’s analysis of tax information. That was just under $900,000 less than the top coach on the list—Kentucky’s John Calipari.

Duke is a private school, meaning their compensation information is harder to obtain, but the paper based it on Duke’s federal income tax return for 2017.

The return showed that $1,267,962 of Krzyzewski’s total compensation had been deferred from on prior years’ returns, although there was no other information about when or why the money had been deferred.

Taking away the deferred money, Krzyzewski received about $200,000 less in total compensation than he did the year before.

Krzyzewski’s base pay went up by $200,000 for the second straight year, topping $3 million. The drop in total compensation was due to money reported as “retirement or other deferred compensation,” which was $900,000, down from $1.3 million the year before.

Krzyzewski received a $2.985 million bonus, which was the same amount as in the previous year.

After Calipari and Krzyzewski, UCLA’s Mick Cronin was the next-highest paid coach at $5.5 million in total compensation, thanks to a $2 million signing bonus paid after he arrived at UCLA from Cincinnati.

Rounding out the top five were Tennessee’s Rick Barnes and Texas Tech’s Chris Beard.

UNC’s Roy Williams was the next highest-paid ACC coach, coming in at No. 8—behind Jay Wright and Tom Izzo—at $4.1 million. Louisville’s Chris Mack was one spot behind Williams.