The thing that has surprised me so far is that the amount of a pay raise Jamie Dixon is being offered from Pitt is still unknown. It appears, though, that the amount Arizona State is offering has been leaked. Courtesy of e-mail from Pittsburgh Sports Report:

According to a source close the situation, University of Pittsburgh basketball coach Jamie Dixon was leaning toward remaining at Pitt early in the week, but Arizona State may have sweetened their offer.

According to the source, Arizona State won’t pay Dixon more than they currently pay football coach Dirk Koetter, who makes a reported $950,000 a season. Arizona State is reportedly prepared to pay a salary of $800,000 annually, plus easily attainable bonuses, which could include wins and attendance. “They don’t have many wins or much attendance now so the bonuses are virtually guaranteed,” says the source. “Then he would approach a million.”

The source goes on to say that as of now, Dixon could go either way. “My guess is that he is pushing the envelope on both ends.”

I’m guessing that does not include what he would get for his shoe contract with the school and radio/TV show

Pitt has to at least approach that if they want to keep Dixon. Yes, that means at least matching or even exceeding the amount they pay Coach Dave Wannstedt. In fact, here’s something I wrote just before Wannstedt agreed to terms with Pitt, regarding Louisville and Bob Petrino:

I’m just worried. The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that Pitt is looking to go cheap. Real cheap. I look at how Louisville just gave Petrino a big raise, and even then the AD acknowledged there will still be risks that he leaves.

Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich still expects Petrino’s name to come up when higher-profile jobs open.

“There are certainly schools out there that have more money than us,” Jurich said. “But we’re going to do everything in our power to keep everything stabilized here.”

That’s understanding the nature of college football, a willingness to look clear-eyed at it, and understanding if you want to keep or get someone you don’t wait to respond with the money and/or contract. Yeah, Petrino nearly bolted last winter for Auburn. There’s no guarantee he won’t go somewhere else in a year or two. But you deal with the situation, and prepare just in case.

I don’t see that from the Pitt administration. I see unpreparedness, fear and an unwillingness to pay or really look for the kind of coach they say they want — someone to take them to that mythical “next level.”

Happily, I was wrong about the football side, but it was mainly because they got the guy they really wanted and believed in. Not necessarily because they were willing to pay for the market rate.

I’m not sure how hard they are working to keep to Dixon.

Dave in Orlando pointed to this article on coaching salaries.

Tom Crean, at $1.65 million, is one of the rare exception in that his entire earnings are listed. But most of the other coaches listed have very lucrative other arrangements that more than supplement the salaries.

However, coaches are paid in different ways and can earn tens of thousands of dollars in so-called outside income. That makes exact comparisons difficult.

Marquette officials, for example, say Crean’s pay represents his entire pay, including compensation for holding basketball camps, and TV and radio shows. Other schools might report a base salary, but are not obligated to report outside income.

Crean’s salary appears in a tax document that Marquette, a non-profit organization, must file each year with the Internal Revenue Service. In addition to a salary of $1,655,819, Crean also made $28,884 that was placed in a benefit plan, and was given an additional $3,784 for expenses.

Crean has coached the Golden Eagles to three NCAA tournament appearances, including a Final Four appearance in 2002-’03. This season, the team surprised many by going 20-10 overall and finishing the regular season in the tough Big East with a 10-6 record, and gained a bid to the NCAA tournament. The Golden Eagles will meet Alabama on Thursday in San Diego.

John Marinatto, senior associate commissioner at the Big East and a former athletic director at Providence College, said Crean was in the upper echelon of highly compensated coaches in the 16-team conference.

Pitt doesn’t want to be seen as merely a stepping stone. Well, it also means that the school needs to step up, ahead of things in terms of what it is willing to pay to keep or have the coaches it wants.

If Arizona St. or Missouri wouldn’t be looking to take a run at nabbing Dixon, some other school would if he keeps having success. Just like Marquette has to face the buzz around Crean every year. Same with Izzo at MSU or Barnes at Texas and so on.

Maybe the numbers seem ridiculous, but they are what the market is paying.

Any name, successful coach Pitt would hope to target would very likely cost considerably more than it would to keep Dixon.

Seriously. Name another coach Pitt could likely hire with a reasonably comparable record of accomplishments that would come cheaper?

Not to pile on TOO much, but I enjoyed this bit of Schadenfreude that I found in the form of this article from Slate. Yeah, part of my enjoyment stems from the fact that I’m bitter, but then again, I’m ALWAYS bitter (at least according to many who know me, including Chas, Pat and Lee). Another part of my enjoyment, however, came from Jacob Liebenluft’s skillful deflating of the whole “Cinderella” myth.

First, the fun part; that is, the part about Bradley not being as pure as “they” would have us belive:

Let’s take a closer look at Bradley University, that great restorer of
innocence. Patrick O’Bryant, the Braves’ 7-foot-tall NBA prospect, was suspended for eight games earlier this year for accepting money for work he never did. Three other Bradley players were found to have
accepted excessive payments. (The school claimed the players didn’t realize they were receiving too much money.) After the Braves’ second-best player, Marcellus Sommerville, transferred from the University of Iowa in 2003, his father told the Peoria Journal-Star that Bradley coaches engaged in illegal tampering, encouraging Sommerville to
switch schools while he was still enrolled at Iowa. Starting point guard Daniel Ruffin was forced to sit out his freshman year when the NCAA refused to accept his test scores.

Adding on to this delightful take down, Mr. Liebenluft goes on to put the Missouri Valley Conference, this year’s Mid-major darling, in its place:

At least Bradley graduates 73 percent of its players—a figure many of its fellow Cinderellas can’t come close to matching. The plucky Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers, who dominated Oklahoma in the first round, have a graduation rate of 28 percent. Bradley’s Missouri Valley Conference rivals at Wichita State (50 percent) and Northern Iowa (30 percent) don’t fare much better.

Wrapping up, he then does his best to explode the “mid-major” ideal altogether:

Much of the little guys’ appeal comes from the fact that the players don’t turn pro after their sophomore year and the coaches don’t get paid big bucks. But that has less to do with morals than opportunity. Mid-major players don’t emerge fully formed from a magical peach-basket-laden gym in rural Indiana, ready to hoop it up and hit the books with equal enthusiasm. They come from the same shady prep schools and junior colleges as the major-conference studs—they’re just not quite good enough to get recruited by the top-tier teams.

Read the whole thing for yourselves. If you’re like me, and suspect that some of you are, then you’ll find it a great help to realize that many of these “Cinderallas” are really just hookers with hearts of gold.

I do hope Dixon stays with Pitt. If he doesn’t, though, I hope the Pitt administration is paying attention to the way Missouri has handled its search as a way not to do it.

Gary Link and Jon Sundvold apparently will have no further say in who will be Missouri’s new head men’s basketball coach.

Mike Alden, MU’s athletic director, has told Link and senior associate Mario Moccia that neither they nor Sundvold will be part of meetings between Alden, UMC deputy chancellor Mike Middleton and consultant Bob Beaudine aimed at selecting the man who will replace Quin Snyder.

The search committee’s job was apparently to simply put a list of candidates together. Sort of.

“I guess the definition of our committee was the same as last time,” Sundvold said, “a screening committee that put the list together, and then Mike can go make that decision.”

When MU hired Snyder, then an assistant out of Duke, Sundvold was one of the search committee members that favored hiring Bill Self, now the Kansas head coach. Alden hired Snyder.

This time, Link and Sundvold favored hiring, or at least interviewing, Bob Huggins. So too, Sundvold indicated, did Moccia. That position became moot when Alden and UMC chancellor Brady Deaton said that neither Huggins nor former Utah coach Rick Majerus would be interviewed at MU.

The reason, Sundvold was told by Deaton, was that Deaton and Alden weren’t comfortable with past NCAA or off-court problems associated with both those veteran coaches.

Now take a look at the list of candidates.

In no particular order of preference, it is believed to now include at least John Calipari of Memphis, John Beilein of West Virginia, Jaime Dixon of Pitt, Anderson, Alford, Creighton’s Dana Altman, Kelvin Sampson of Oklahoma and possibly even Kevin Stallings of Vanderbilt.

Yes, John Calipari has a sterling reputation, and Kelvin Sampson’s Oklahoma squad is now facing probation for their recruiting violations.

Andy Katz at ESPN.com had reported earlier that Iowa’s Steve Alford was still a possibility along with Mike Anderson (UAB), Dana Altman and John Beilein on the short list. This despite Alford’s press release yesterday professing his happiness at Iowa.

Cinci interim head coach, Andy Kennedy, or Murray State head coach, Mick Cronin will likely be given the head job at Ole Miss.

Meanwhile, Cinci, still playing in the NIT, has been given permission from George Washington to interview Karl Hobbs.

If Dixon were to leave Pitt, my guess is they would take another run at Wake Forest’s Skip Prosser. I don’t think Chancellor Nordenberg has forgotten him, and would like to try again. Just a hunch.

The Johnstown paper checks in on their local product, LaRod Stephens-Howling.

Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt wanted to use the freshman’s blazing speed and athleticism, two traits sorely lacking on the Pitt offense last season, and the Greater Johnstown High School graduate contributed a great deal when he wasn’t injured. He missed two full games and parts of others.

“We’d like him to play an even bigger role this season,” Wannstedt said.

Strangely, Stephens didn’t think he had that bad of a season staying healthy. He does have other goals.

Stephens-Howling and Collins need to stay healthy until the other players gain experience. And for the slightly-built Stephens-Howling, listed at 5-foot-7, 165 pounds, it’s going to be tough.

“I think I held up pretty good,” Stephens-Howling said. “One of the big questions for me was my pass-blocking, but I think I did a pretty good job at it. So, I just kept working hard in the weight room in the offseason to help out my pass-blocking and maybe get a little more power when I’m running.”

Stephens-Howling also said he expected to remain the top kick-returner. Injuries held him to just five returns, but he ran one back 95 yards for a touchdown against Ohio University. He also caught nine passes for 41 yards, but did not reach the end zone. His only score was the kickoff return.

“I think about it a lot when I’m in the weight room,” Stephens-Howling said. “I want to get a lot stronger and get more power, so I can finish my runs. That motivates me to keep working harder because I haven’t gotten into the end zone. I put on 10 pounds since the season, but I’ve gotten stronger. It’s not really about gaining more weight.”

Kevin Collier is all but presumed to grab the starting job, but Stephens as a change of pace and bouncing it outside is an enticing possibility to share time. Not to mention the general health for Pitt RBs the last few years has been spotty — possibly related to getting no blocking on their runs and having to absorb a lot of contact.

The article has some “between-the-lines” stuff on Stephens adjusting to the student part. A little worrisome.

We have speculation, noise, courtships but not much else.

Say this for Coach Jamie Dixon, he and “his people” seem to know how to keep the leaks to a minimum. While there are reports of talks, offers and shortlists — the one thing not reported is what Coach Dixon is actually thinking.

Usually in a Coaching soap opera there are some leaks about how the coach is actually feeling or leaning. Some unnamed source that gives a tidbit about being tempted, conflicted, not really interested, pursuing, or just something. Here there has been nothing. We don’t even know anything about the contract extension offer from Pitt. Nothing about years or money in even a rough figure.

Coach Dixon has let all the leaks come from the programs and just kept about his own business. Frustrating when you want information, but it is actually respectable that he has not made noise.

Here’s my only tip I can offer on effective Dixon Watching. Keep the closest watch on anything coming from Andy Katz at ESPN.com. For the past year, of all the national college basketball writers, he’s been the only one that gets quotes and comments from Jamie Dixon on a regular basis. That means regular communication and some level of trust. If there is any leak from the Dixon camp, Katz will likely have it.

So here’s what’s out there. It looks like Arizona State is talking by phone to Dixon.

According to sources at ASU, preliminary talks are under way with Dixon, whom the Sun Devils have targeted for the job that Rob Evans vacated on March 10.

If by “vacated,” you mean had his office packed up and fired, then sure.

A couple of weeks ago, Dixon hired Dennis Coleman of Boston as his attorney. He told the Pittsburgh media that Coleman would not serve as his agent.

Coleman is also Evans’ attorney. Coleman, who represents between 35 and 40 college coaches, has not returned calls to the media.

According to sources in both Tempe and Pittsburgh, ASU and Pitt are eager to get an answer – yes or no – from Dixon by the end of the week.

But a potential delay could happen as a result of Missouri’s reported interest in Dixon.

Dixon is back in the ‘Burgh, after a trip to Altoona to see Schenley and Harrisburg play in a PIAA high school playoff game. The local papers have nothing, only reporting on a very brief item in a small Arizona newspaper:

Arizona State officials have begun talks with Jamie Dixon, the University of Pittsburgh coach whose team recently was eliminated from the NCAA basketball tournament, a source familiar with the process confirmed Tuesday.

That’s all, that’s the story. In fact, looking at the stories, they all seem to just refer back to each other. Clearly no one in the media has a good sense of this either.

As for the Missouri possibility, well he’s on the list, but that’s all that is known. It seems the list has Mike Anderson of UAB as well. It also would appear that John Brady of LSU is under consideration. Missouri has a list of about 5 candidates by all accounts: John Beilein (WVU), Mike Anderson, Dana Altman (Creighton), John Brady and Jamie Dixon.

John Brady is paid a bit over $700,000 per year and was offered an extension by LSU prior to the SEC Tournament.

All reports about Bob Huggins being up for the Missouri job appear to be over, since he is heading to Kansas State.