Last year, we invited you to join AAUW in using gender equality to guide your bracket selections; and this year, we are at it again! It is disheartening that women coaches are still so significantly underpaid compared with their male counterparts. Plus, all the coaches for men’s sports teams are still paid more — often significantly more — on average than coaches for women’s sports.
Betting on schools with smaller gender pay gaps is also a great way to promote one of the NCAA’s stated values: a commitment to an inclusive culture that fosters equitable participation for student athletes and career opportunities for coaches and administrators from diverse backgrounds.
AAUW’s salary showdown brackets predict the victors of the women’s and men’s championships by calculating the gap between the average head coach salary for women’s and men’s teams at each school in the tournament and then advancing the school with the smaller gender pay gap to the next round.
According to our brackets, we are once again sporting red and blue in honor of the University of Dayton. In both the women’s and men’s brackets, the University of Dayton comes out victorious. At Dayton, the salaries women’s sports head coaches earn are, on average, 93 percent of what men’s sports head coaches earn.
If our brackets play out, Dayton, an 11 seed in the men’s bracket and a 7 seed in the women’s bracket, would achieve the feat of securing the men’s and women’s championships concurrently. Though Dayton is the only school to be in the final four for both of our salary showdown brackets, by our count 22 teams — out of the men’s 68 total and the women’s 64 total — are in both brackets.
Men’s bracket breakdown: Our analysis predicts a lot of upsets. If our brackets played out, all the men’s number 1 and number 2 seeds, all but Notre Dame of the number 3 seeds, and all the number 4 seeds would lose their first games. Joining Dayton in the final four are Davidson (73 percent pay gap), Hampton (68 percent pay gap), and Harvard (63 percent pay gap).