This year, Dawn Staley coached the University of South Carolina's women's basketball team to a perfect season and its third championship under her leadership. Her new contract makes her one of the highest-paid coaches in women's basketball, and she spoke to ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath about what it took to assert herself during contract negotiations.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Coach Dawn Staley, thank you so much for sitting down with Forbes for the 50 over 50.
00:15I'm glad I'm alive and well and to be here in the present to be over 50.
00:20You're not just alive and well.
00:22You are a Hall of Fame point guard.
00:24You have earned multiple Olympic gold medals, both as a player and as a coach.
00:30You have led the South Carolina Gamecocks to three national championships, and this
00:34year, along with the NCAA Women's titles, you were undefeated.
00:38I want to start by asking, how do you maintain this record of excellence?
00:43I think when you've been successful at things, there's a certain habitual journey that you're
00:53on.
00:54A lot of things are really, really good for success, and you try to stay on course with
00:59those things.
01:00I always talk to our players about creating positive and good habits, and that's what
01:07we do, year after year after year.
01:10And then we decompress some and say, where could we have gotten better?
01:14And then maybe, now maybe we'll switch up and do something a little bit different, but
01:20If it's not broken, I wouldn't bother it.
01:23Now, I talked about your record of excellence, but we are speaking in a moment of unprecedented
01:28attention on women's sports, women's basketball.
01:32Your NCAA finals drew 18.7 million people watching.
01:36The WNBA saw record attendance for its debut.
01:39What do you make of this moment in time?
01:41What I make of the movement of women's basketball is this.
01:45I do believe we've been held back for a very long time, and now we're like bottlenecking
01:51it.
01:52We're trying to get to the top and get as many eyeballs on our game.
01:56And people are clamoring.
01:57They're clamoring to watch.
01:59They're clamoring to be in attendance.
02:03They're buying probably, we don't even know this, but record amounts of apparel and clothing.
02:12I just think it's been on the rise for so long.
02:16Now it's uncontrollable.
02:19I think we're in a great place where people are really looking at us as a sport.
02:23You mentioned the merchandise.
02:24There was a report that came out recently that estimated the market was $4 billion that
02:28people will spend this year on merchandise for women's sports.
02:32How much money have we missed out on by not investing in women's sports before this kind
02:37of past few years?
02:39I think that's been my frustration as the years have gone by where we don't capitalize.
02:45I don't understand why people think we can't be a billion-dollar industry.
02:53We can be, and people are seeing it now.
02:56We're very popular.
02:59It's probably not too late, but a little late if you're really trying to get a return on
03:06your investment.
03:07Why do you think it's taken until now?
03:10I think sometimes you need a unifier.
03:12I think Caitlyn Clarke has done a tremendous job at being that person that people want
03:18to see.
03:20It is the young, the old.
03:23She's brought a different set of eyeballs on our game.
03:26Now we're being talked about on talk radio, all the talk shows, all the podcasts.
03:32Now we're seeing not only Caitlyn, but all the rest of the talented young ladies that
03:39we didn't dare to cover for one reason or another, but now it's a popular thing to talk
03:45about women's basketball, and it's a great thing.
03:49I'm so happy that I'm alive and well to witness it and to see it and to be a part of it.
03:54It's very different from when you were in college.
03:56You were player of the year for two years when you were in college, and you graduated,
04:00and you told us that there wasn't a job for you in U.S. women's basketball.
04:05How did you handle that moment?
04:06Well, I think with women, we persevere all our lives.
04:11I knew at the end of my college career that would be it as far as playing in the States.
04:18What did I do?
04:19I got an agent, and I had to wait.
04:21I had to wait a few months because guards of my stature, meaning short guards, don't
04:28get the opportunity to go right away.
04:30You'll have to replace somebody, so I had to wait until somebody didn't do their job
04:35well and they needed another guard, which happened probably within two months of the
04:40season starting, and I replaced somebody.
04:44That's how it was.
04:45I signed for $35,000.
04:48It was my first contract, and I happily took the offer and played another two years before
04:56I was able to just play Olympic basketball, and then from there, the WNBA and some other
05:03leagues got started, the ABL got started, and we've never looked back since.
05:09You've never looked back, though.
05:10Back then, you kind of said you didn't want to coach.
05:13You were interested in playing.
05:15What changed your mind, and what was the hardest part of transitioning from player to coach?
05:21I look back on it.
05:22I didn't want to coach because I looked at the responsibility of a coach.
05:28It's a lot, and I was closer to my players' ages than their parents, so I was a little
05:37bit afraid of that responsibility, but also when I looked at what the AD, his name was
05:44Dave O'Brien, I mean, he challenged me to turn the program around, and I never looked
05:49at basketball as a challenge, and when he did, that was the very thing that I needed
05:55to accept that challenge, and now as I look back on it 24 years ago, I mean, I'm doing
06:02what I'm supposed to do.
06:05Coaching is my second skin.
06:07It is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, and fortunately for me, basketball continues
06:13to love up on me as strongly as I love it.
06:16Now, in 2021, you renegotiated your contract with USC.
06:22You signed a seven-year, $22.4 million contract extension, which made you one of the highest
06:28paid women's coaches in basketball.
06:30Why was it so important for you to strike that deal and renegotiate that contract?
06:35Well, I think, for one, any time you have sustained success in any sport, any level,
06:46you deserve raises, and for me, I probably looked at my male counterpart at the time
06:52and saw that his raises were much more than my raises, and his success didn't match our
07:00success, so I thought it was a great opportunity for me to just speak on that and to talk about
07:07that, especially when you got to strike when the iron's hot.
07:09You can't go in and ask for certain things if you're not, you know, you haven't had success.
07:14You just really can't, or else it doesn't make sense to people.
07:18What makes sense is success, like sustained success makes sense.
07:23Sometimes it doesn't make sense for women to ask for that.
07:27I don't know why, but it made sense for me, and I hope in me going to ask and me fighting
07:33that fight, not just women's basketball coaches get to benefit from it, but I hope every profession,
07:41because I'm sure every woman that is an executive that is doing the same type of job that their
07:48male counterparts are doing with the same type of success, some of them are afraid to
07:54go ask because they want to lose their footing, but when you bet on yourself, when you utilize
08:01the perseverance that it took to get you to that status, it's the same kind of gall it
08:10takes to go in there and ask for what is your worth, like you deserve that.
08:16You're not asking for, you know, a handout.
08:21You're asking for what you deserve, and don't be afraid to go in there and do that.
08:27Now we're talking for the 50 over 50, and I have one final question before we let you
08:31go.
08:32Is being over 50 an advantage or disadvantage in your line of work?
08:37Being over 50 is the most liberating.
08:40Like seriously, I know myself.
08:43Like being over 50, you're more lean in life.
08:46You know what you like.
08:48You know what you don't like, and a lot of people look at me and say, oh, I can't believe
08:52she's over 50.
08:54I don't always act like I'm over 50.
08:56I act age appropriate when necessary, but when I'm with my players, I feel in my 30s.
09:05I feel more in my 50s when they get on my nerves.
09:11Coach Daly, thank you so much for joining us.