May 28, 2024 | Andrei Greska | 0 Comments

Shaka’s salary, Wojo’s buyout and other notes from Marquette’s 2023 tax filings

While Marquette is a private school and thus its inner financial workings not open to the public, it does have to release its 990 tax filings yearly, one of the only times we get to poke around behind the scenes. For our purposes, it also gives us an insight into what kind of financial figures Marquette’s basketball coaches are making, or made the previous season.

Shaka Smart Salary

One of the questions I get every season is, how much does Marquette’s coach make, and how does that compare to what other coaches around D1 and the Big East make?

The answer to the first question is now, a base pay of $2,791,853 with bonuses of $154,000, for a total of just under $3million at $2,945,853. That’s up over 37% compared to 2022.

While we don’t quite have 2023 numbers from across the league yet, we can say he’d be in the top 5 or so in the Big East based off 2022 numbers. I will update this once all schools have reported.

Wojo Buyout

I’ve reported on the Wojo buyout in the past, but now can say with confidence, this is the last time Steve Wojciechowski’s name will appear in the Marquette tax filings, as the final payment of his buyout has been made, per language in the 990.

In 2023, 2 years after his firing, Marquette paid Wojo $4.6M to not coach the team, which means that over the last 2 years, MU paid him over $10M to leave. That is a huge number and part of why I didn’t think a change could be made afer the 2021 season.

Below is a full listing of his 9 years of payments from the school, totaling over $25M.

Assistant Coach Pay

And while we normally don’t see much more from the 990 as it relates to basketball, there was a portion that really surprised me.

Assistant coach DeAndre Haynes was listed in the highest compensated employees section, listed as making $420,486 in the 2023 season. We normally don’t see assistants on the tax filings, as they normally don’t make enough to be listed among the university’s top earners. But as he’s the 7th highest paid employee at the school, and 4th highest in the athletic department, Haynes broke the mold.

What this tells us is:

Marquette’s commitment to investing in the program and winning is legit.
Spending $400K on an assistant is no joke, and up there with big time basketball schools.
It will be very difficult to pry MU’s assistants to other jobs

Add this to Shaka’s competitive salary and the enormous Wojo buyout and you have a very clear picture of what Marquette basketball means to the university and the commitment it has in place.