Matt Charboneau, The Detroit News
This was college basketball’s world in 1976, the year Jud Heathcote arrived as Michigan State’s newest head basketball coach.
It was a Saturday morning in July and most people, even in East Lansing, knew little about a man who that spring had decided to leave the University of Montana and accept a Big Ten job that paid, yes, $25,000 per year.
That is correct. Jud Heathcote’s starting salary at MSU was $25,000. MSU’s new football coach, Darryl Rogers, also hired in the spring of ’76, was making a whopping $40,000.