UVA Baseball coach Brian O’Connor is a reported top target for the open job at Mississippi State, which just fired its baseball coach, Chris Lemonis, who won a national championship at the school in 2021, but was only in one NCAA Tournament in the three years following, and was 25-19, and 7-14 in the SEC, when he got axed on Monday.
Lemonis was making $1.325 million this year, which is a smidge less than the $1.4 million that UVA Athletics is paying O’Connor, per the terms of a three-year extension that O’Connor signed on the eve of the 2024 College World Series, and runs through the 2031 season.
ICYMI
- Brian O’Connor’s new UVA deal puts him in Top 10 nationally in total compensation
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- How close was Brian O’Connor to taking the LSU job?
- Brian O’Connor resists overtures from Texas, staying put with UVA Baseball
The talk around the athletics department is that there is legitimate reason for concern that O’Connor might be willing to listen to the people down in Starkville.
Word has been circulating since the fall that O’Connor, who is in his 22nd season at Virginia, is frustrated with a lack of commitment from UVA Athletics to use money from the $20.5 million that the House settlement will authorize to go toward compensation for his ballplayers.
I’ve not seen anything formal on this, but the word circulating behind the scenes is that UVA Athletics is planning to use 95 percent of the total that it can dole out under House to football and men’s basketball, with the other varsity sports getting crumbs.
I don’t know why any other Power 4 school would do anything differently, particularly down at Mississippi State, where the folks there also have to compete in big-boy football.
And it’s not like Mississippi State makes a ton of money at the baseball thing, vis-à-vis UVA Baseball.
The baseball program down there routinely averages more than 10,000 fans per home game, and still runs annual operating deficits in the $2 million to $3 million range, just like UVA Baseball, which averages 4,000 a game, does.
The stark reality illustrated in those numbers: money in college sports comes from TV, and college baseball doesn’t make money on TV, because only the diehards are watching, and there aren’t many diehards.
The World Series gets in the range of 2.5 million viewers, but the Super Regionals are closer to 500,000, the Regionals 250,000, and the averages for the relative few regular-season games that get on broadcast cable draw less than 100,000.
This is a tiny fraction of the numbers for football and men’s basketball, which is why athletics departments are saying, we’re going to put more of that House money into football and baseball, because, return on investment.
Back to O’Connor, and the Mississippi State rumors: I don’t doubt that Mississippi State will want to make a splash hire, and the folks there wouldn’t be doing their due diligence if they didn’t reach out to O’Connor to gauge his possible interest.
It wouldn’t take giving him more money for himself, but promising a bigger budget for recruiting and retention – and I’d expect them to be able to promise a bigger budget for recruiting and retention.
How much bigger, given what O’Connor has been able to generate at UVA, from the regular donors, and his guys who have gone on to great success, the Ryan Zimmermans, Sean Doolittles, the Chris Taylors, would be a question.
Bottom line: I don’t see it happening, but, here we go again, having to worry about one of the big boys maybe trying to poach our guy.
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Chris Graham
