Meet Derek Kellogg: The Only State Employee Making Over $1 Million A Year Who Is Driving UMass Basketball Into The Ground And Needs To Be Fired Immediately

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Take a wild guess who the highest paid state employee in Massachusetts is? No, it’s not some political hack who got a hookup job where he could influence the State Legislature to vote his or her gigantic raises. The highest paid employee is actually this man:

UMass men’s basketball coach Derek Kellogg – the only Massachusetts State Employee with a salary over $1 million:

Of course this is hardly a big number in college basketball. Lots of college coaches make millions of dollars. John Calipari makes over $6 million to coach Kentucky. Coach K also makes over $6 million at Duke, as does Rick Pitino at Louisville. Kansas’ Bill Self and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo both make over $4 million.

But all five of those guys have won national championships and made multiple Final Four appearances. They play in major power conferences, they fill their arenas up for every single game, they generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through the sale of merchandise, they can get businesses to pay more money to advertise in their arenas, and they create a brand that continues to attract NBA caliber players on a yearly basis.

Derek Kellogg coaches UMass, which plays in the Atlantic 10. The A-10 is a good conference, but it’s basically the next step down from conferences like the ACC and Big 10. They send multiple teams to the tournament every year, including a record six in 2014. But they rarely make Final Four’s, and never win National Championships. Generally when coaches in this conference make a name for themselves they end up getting offered higher paying jobs in more high profile conferences.

The Atlantic 10 doesn’t generate as much revenue as the ACC, and thus their coaches don’t get paid as much. But they still do pretty well for themselves. Currently there are 14 teams in the A-10 – UMass, Davidson, Fordham, George Mason, Richmond, George Washington, St. Bonaventure, Dayton, VCU, Rhode Island, St. Louis, Duquense, La Salle, and St. Joseph’s. Amongst those coaches Kellogg ranks 2nd in pay.

The only coach who makes more money is Dayton’s Archie Miller, who has earned every penny of it. In just five seasons Miller has led the Flyers to an Elite 8 appearance, three NCAA tournaments, and has never had a losing record. In this, his sixth season, Dayton is currently in first place in the conference, and barring an unprecedented collapse they will make their fourth straight NCAA appearance.

The other coaches in the A-10 making more then $1 million are Richmond’s Chris Mooney, VCU’s Will Wade, and Saint Joseph’s Phil Martelli. In Martelli’s 21 years he’s had 15 winning seasons, 7 NCAA tournament appearances, led the 2004 team to the #1 national ranking, and he’s won two of the last three A-10 championships. Mooney hasn’t had a losing season in 10 years, and has a Sweet 16 run under his belt. Wade is only in his second year, but has a 24-6 conference record, is going to make the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row, and lost the A-10 championship last year to Martelli’s St. Joe’s squad.

In other words, they’ve all earned their million dollar salary.

Derek Kellogg hasn’t.

Here’s his resume:

As you can see he has a losing record in conference play (65-78). He has never finished higher than 5th place in the 14 team conference. He has made the NCAA Tournament once, largely because his best player Chaz Williams, literally put the team on his back and played playground basketball in some big wins early in the year. They were a .500 team in the second half of the year, but were grossly overseeded with a 6 seed, and ended up getting creampied by an 11th seeded Tennessee team that won a play-in game, losing 86-67. Here’s some highlights:

Down 20 at halftime Kellogg gave perhaps the least inspiring halftime speech in the history of coaching:

But because it was the first time in 18 years UMass made the tourney, since college basketball legend Marcus Camby donned the Minuteman uniform, Kellogg got an extension through 2019, which came with a massive raise.

Then Chaz Williams graduated and UMass has gone back to being terrible, finishing 9th and 10th in the conference. Neither team was remotely close to making the NIT.

During his tenure at UMass, nine different conference teams have made the conference championship at least once. Kellogg has never made it that far, and has only made the semifinal twice. Yet he is the highest paid state employee, and the second highest paid coach in the conference.

This year expectations were high after Kellogg brought in the best recruiting class he’s had in his nine years in Amherst. This didn’t happen on its own. Thanks to generous boosters the school built the multi million dollar Champions Center – a state of the art practice facility that you must have in order to attract four and five star recruits.

Even Coach Calipari was blown away by it:

And as a result this year’s freshmen class featured New Orleans 6’5″ point guard Dejon Jarreau – a player who had offers from ACC, Big 12, Big 10, and SEC schools and never would’ve considered a school like UMass without a facility like this.

DeJon Jarraeu is down to Wichita State, Oklahoma, Ok St, UMass, LSU, Florida, Tulane, Miami, USC, Texas & Creighton. pic.twitter.com/FUFxfDVnSX

— Pat Lawless (@PatLawless_) July 19, 2015

Kid can play:

But as soon as conference play started, reality started to set in. They’ve gotten massacred by mediocre teams like St. Bonaventure, a team that’s starting a player from St. Peter Marian that was barely recruited out of high school. They’ve lost by double digits to teams like La Salle, who they were beating at halftime. They’ve blown leads to cellar dweller George Mason not once, but twice. They were beaten pretty easily by one of the biggest abortions the league has seen in a long time – the deplorable St. Louis Bilikens. They lost AT HOME to Fordham, a team that has no business even playing in this conference.

More importantly, they’ve gotten worse as the season goes along, just as every Kellogg coached team has. Because good coaches make adjustments and help their players develop. Under Kellogg players consistently stagnate and never reach their potential. The same will happen to Jarreau and his classmates so long as Kellogg remains the coach. Other teams figure out how to beat UMass, while it appears as if UMass does zero game planning for their opponent.

Anyone can do what Kellogg can as a coach. The guy flipping burgers at the concession stand has no less ability than Kellogg does to manage in game situations. But he has more talent on his roster than any other coach in the conference. He has access to better facilities in order to recruit. And yet all he does is lose.

So why is he still here? Well, this guy mostly:

#FireKellogg Total BS stop this unproductive damage to the program.

— john kennedy (@kennjack1048) January 29, 2017

John Kennedy is a very wealthy alumni and donor. And he supports Kellogg for some strange reason. This despite the fact that the Mullins Center has less than 3,000 fans (capacity over 9,000) on a consistent basis. Despite the fact that we have seen no signs in nine years that he can coach his way out of a paper bag. Two years ago I bought tickets to a UMass-VCU game for $75 each. The game was soldout. I wouldn’t pay $5 to watch this shitshow now. Every home game has the potential to bring in over $100,000 in ticket sales. But as long as Kellogg is the coach the school will never, ever see this revenue.

Of course an even bigger reason is the lack of press. Masslive’s reporter is this idiot:

Dan Malone, from Masslive. Real teams have real media that calls out the coaches and holds them to a high standard. In Boston we have guys like Mike Felger and Dan Shaughnessy, who despite being the ultimate trolls still hold coaches and players to an impossible standard. But 90 miles away in Amherst you can pretty much lose, and lose, and lose, and no one will call for your head. If the Boston media was as indifferent and lazy as the UMass media, then M.L. Carr, Bobby Valentine, and Pete Carroll would still be coaching here.

But make no doubt about it – if you build it, they will come. Everyone growing up in the 90’s suddenly became a UMass fan. People want to like UMass, because the alternative is Boston College, and there’s nothing to like about an elitist school of WASPY kids with boat shoes like BC.  Three years ago when they made the tournament they were selling out every home game. But no one wants to watch a sucky team, especially when the outcome is so predictable. Can’t say I blame them.

This is more than just about basketball. It’s about taxpayer money. We’re paying for this. College sports isn’t supposed to be an expense. It’s supposed to be an investment. Kentucky basketball brings in hundreds of millions of dollars for their state every single year. UMass basketball costs the state nothing and brings back nothing in return. The fix isn’t easy, but the answer isn’t Kellogg. And if they don’t fire him, then their All-Star recruiting class is all gonna transfer to other schools.

They cannot afford to keep this guy around any longer. A real basketball school wouldn’t stand for this. Here’s Athletic Director Ryan Bamford’s Twitter. If you’re a UMass fan, let him know that you’re not wasting your money on tickets to watch this sucky product any longer. If you’re a taxpayer who is concerned that the highest paid state employee is a proven loser with no ability to generate any revenue, let him know that he needs to do his job and hire a real coach.

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