Texas invests in Miller to coach basketball at a football school

Published 2:25 pm Friday, March 28, 2025

AUSTIN — Texas got its new head basketball coach.

And a darn good one that it’s lucky to have.

Now the school has to forge a new identity and decide just how serious it is about winning at that sport’s highest level.

In short, Texas has to put its considerable money where its basketball mouth is.

And not just feed football.

On Tuesday morning at a press conference in its Hall of Fame room notably located in the north end zone of the Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, the Longhorns made it official when they introduced Xavier’s Sean Miller as a high-profile replacement for the fired Rodney Terry less than a week after the season ended.

Miller loves him some football. He’d better.

But that affection seemed genuine for this life-long Pittsburgh Steelers fan. He loves watching SEC football, gave a shoutout at the press conference to Longhorn football coach Steve Sarkisian and said when he sat out for one season after getting fired at Arizona, he missed basketball so much and was so bored that at times he would “play Madden” football.

It shouldn’t be lost on anybody that many of the seven SEC programs that have reached the Sweet 16 are all football-first schools so Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas are showing you can win big in both sports.

Perhaps most importantly, Miller said he embraces the fact that he will be coaching for the first time at an acknowledged football school, one that has won four national championships and has been resurrected by Sarkisian, who has taken Texas to back-to-back College Football Playoff semifinals. That’s good because football gets the lion’s share of the fans’ and media’s attention here and the whole jungle’s share of the money.

Texas loves its football and, well, would like very much to win in basketball as Rick Barnes proved over his 17 seasons as coach and Vic Schaefer continues to prove in leading the women’s program to three Elite Eight finishes in four seasons and has taken his No. 1 seeded, 33-3 team to this week’s Sweet 16 in Birmingham, Ala.

The school didn’t disclose the terms of Miller’s new contract, but sources tell the Houston Chronicle that the former Big East coach will earn more than $5 million a year in a six-year deal that lured him to what he frankly said “is my final opportunity.”

The question is will NIL and revenue-sharing money follow in kind?

One source said Texas will likely allocate somewhere between $2 million and $3 million for its upcoming revenue-sharing budget moving forward but will probably need to double that to join the elite programs in college basketball.

By comparison, the school will probably devote about $14 million of the expected annual $20.5 million in revenue-sharing to football, starting in July. Texas spent $17 million in NIL money on its football roster last fall and already has allocated $34 million toward football for the 2025 season, the source said.

Miller said he had discussions about NIL and revenue-sharing with athletic director Chris Del Conte and he was good with what he was told.

Texas already spent more than the $3 million that it was paying Terry annually as well as his $5.4 million buyout after firing him Sunday even though Del Conte’s statement that the two “mutually parted ways” was laughable.

It’s widely known that the athletic department’s name, image and likeness budget for basketball landed in the middle of the SEC 16-team pack in the just-completed 19-16 season in which Texas finished 6-12 in conference and coincidentally lost to Miller’s Musketeers in Dayton, Ohio, in last week’s First Four game.

Even freshman superstar Trey Johnson, who is almost certain to declare for the NBA draft as a sure-fire lottery pick, only made about $900,000.

Asked if he can live with Texas’ financial commitment to men’s basketball, Miller said, “Yes.”

“I think it’s partnered with the place itself,” Miller said in a conversation with about 10 reporters after the press conference. “I think you have to take into consideration that anybody who picks the place for the most money as their next destination … a lot of times that same player isn’t necessarily the best fit to win a championship. We have to combine both forces. I don’t have any concern about NIL.”

In the 56-year-old Miller, Texas got itself a proven and demanding head coach who has taken Xavier and Arizona to the Elite Eight four times and comes with the expectation that he’ll break through to bring the Longhorns their first men’s national championship in the sport.

Now the decision awaits the school that demands excellence across the board and has taken the SEC by storm in every other sport but men’s basketball.

If anyone can do it, Miller’s probably that man. In his second stint at Xavier, he took the Musketeers to a Sweet 16 and the round of 64 this month and did it without a single McDonald’s All-American. In between those two seasons, Miller went 16-18 and replaced 10 players on that roster with seven newcomers out of the transfer portal, some of whom might come to Texas.

“I talked to other coaches who say he’s a great guy and a team player and is going to do great here,” said Texas volleyball coach Jerritt Elliott, who has won three national titles in Austin. “All this creates synergy. And that helps recruiting. You can’t rest on your laurels here. It doesn’t motivate me more. It makes me more fearful because if I don’t win the next two years, nobody’s going to remember what we’ve done before.”

This might be a perfect match because Miller will bring an up-tempo style to Austin for the first time since Tom Penders was in town. He has to hit the ground running because the transfer portal opened Monday and he has to decide which, if any, of the current Longhorn players will remain on the roster.

One Miller undoubtedly wants is top reserve Chendall Weaver, the high-energy rebounder and defender who Miller praised after beating Texas in Dayton. The coach met informally with the current team Tuesday night for only about 10 minutes but will attack recruiting before going to his new home in Cincinnati that he and wife Amy have lived in for only five months.

“All good stuff,” said Weaver, who took in the press conference and reacted to Miller’s address. “Everything’s still up in the air. I’ve just got to get to know him a little more. Everything’s happened so quickly. He does play up-tempo, and I like that. Good vibes.”

Miller completely understands the urgency at stake but wants to build his team smartly.

One pundit even called Sean Miller a mix of “Chris Beard intensity without the crazy.”

Texas secretly courted for some time the successful coach who has had just one losing season in 20 years although Del Conte said he studied Miller’s career and background but didn’t reach out until this past weekend.

With the help of the NCAA and an outside search firm, Del Conte said he vetted him to his satisfaction that he was “exonerated by the FBI” over any involvement in the nationwide corruption scandal of pay-for-play that swept up Miller’s Arizona program and cost him his job there although he wasn’t formally charged with any violations. Two assistants were also fired and, unlike Miller, were given show-cause penalties by the NCAA, which vacated 50 Arizona wins over two seasons.

It’s not to say that Texas overlooked this baggage, all of which is legal in today’s college landscape. But maybe that’s part of the price the school is now willing to pay to make men’s basketball as elite as its other 20 sports.

Overall, Miller has led teams to 13 NCAA tournament appearances in his career, including in two of the three most recent seasons at Xavier. Impressively, Miller has won 487 games and brings a winning percentage of more than 71 percent, and regents chairman Kevin Eltife described Miller as a “perfect choice.”

“I found a hungry dog,” Del Conte said, “a dog ready to compete at the highest level.”

Miller, too, raved about the standards at Texas but also recognizes the unrelenting competitiveness of the SEC.

“For a minute, I thought all 16 teams (in the Sweet 16) were from Texas,” he said, laughing and aware a record seven have made it to the second weekend. “When you’re the flagship school in the state of Texas, your power is limitless.”

But up until now, the amount of basketball money has not been.

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