The Indiana State University Director of Athletics Ron Prettyman has criticized the overspending he says is typical in collegiate athletics. He said that he refuses to participate in the insane arms race that marks the competition for collegiate coaching talent, choosing frugality instead. Many schools are falling all over one another to throw bigger paychecks at coaches, but in a time of budgetary crisis at many institutions of higher learning, it looks as though the college athletics departments are fiddling while Rome burns.
For example, Purdue and Missouri were prepared to pay up to $2 million per year for coach Matt Painter, and both were also willing to infuse even more cash into the basketball budget as well. Prettyman, on the other hand, wants to pay only what ISU can afford, but the problem is that isn't much. There's not a lot of money available to pay coaches even if ISU wanted to binge-spend like other schools.