While speaking with Forbes, Staley reveals that she renegotiated the contract because she looked at her achievements in sports compared to what male coaches were doing and how they were being compensated. Nearly three years since signing the contract, the pay gap between what female coaches and male coaches make remains significant.
The men’s Final Four head coaches rank as follows:
- University of Connecticut — Dan Hurley, $5 million
- University of Alabama — Nate Oats, $4.5 million
- Purdue University — Matt Painter, $3.7 million
- North Carolina State University — Kevin Keatts, $2.9 million
“Anytime you have sustained success in any sport, any level, you deserve raises. I probably looked at my male counterpart at the time and saw that his raises were much more than my raises and his success didn’t match our success,” she said during a sit-down interview with Forbes. “So I thought it was a great opportunity for me to just speak on that and to talk about that, especially when you got to strike when the iron’s hot. You can’t go in and ask for certain things if you haven’t had success.”
She continued, “…I hope with me going to ask and me fighting that fight that not just women’s basketball coaches get to benefit from it, but I hope every profession, because I’m sure every woman that is an executive, that is doing the same type of job that their male counterparts are doing with the same type of success, some of them are afraid to go ask because you know they don’t want to lose their footing. But when you bet on yourself, when you utilize the perseverance that took you to that status its the same kind of gall it takes to go in there and ask for what is your worth, like you deserve that. You’re not asking for a handout, you’re asking for what you deserve, and don’t be afraid to go in there and do that.”
