Doyel: Someday soon Butler will be the destination, not a stepping stone

INDIANAPOLIS – Butler lost another one, but this won’t keep happening. Trust me on this. The day is coming — the day is almost here — when Butler won’t be part of a coach’s journey.

The day is coming when Butler will be his destination.

That’s not Pollyanna crap, either. It’s factual, and I'm about to prove it to you, even if it might not look that way in the hours after Butler lost another coach — Chris Holtmann, this time — to a bigger shop in the basketball marketplace.

Woe is Butler? Not for much longer. To understand where Butler is right now — and right now, Butler is a place that can lose a coach to Ohio State — understand where Butler used to be. This is not your father’s basketball job, not anymore, not a place where its coaches jump almost indiscriminately at bigger schools offering bigger contracts. And Chris Holtmann isn’t the one who blows my theory out of the water.

He’s the one who confirms what I’m saying.

Keep up with the Butler coaching search:After Holtmann's departure, Butler is trying to hold onto touted recruiting class

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And what am I saying? This: Butler is evolving from a place where coaches couldn’t imagine staying, to one where they can’t imagine leaving. And soon, very soon, the evolution will be complete. Butler is one coach — one more great Barry Collier hire — away from becoming a fully formed final destination for that guy, whoever he is. (And my guess is that guy will be former Butler guard LaVall Jordan or former Butler assistant Micah Shrewsberry. Imagine if it were Thad Matta 2.0, or former IU coach Tom Crean!)

But let’s go back a bit. Let's remember how easy leaving Butler used to be:

Barry Collier, who started this renaissance as coach and has continued it as AD, left in 2000 for a bad basketball school (Nebraska). Butler was a lower rung on basketball’s farm system in 2000, and Collier left for a job in Double A.

Thad Matta left in 2001 for a school in the Atlantic 10 (Xavier), and Todd Lickliter in 2007 for a solid, but not spectacular, basketball program (Iowa). Butler coaches were still leaving, but now for Triple A.

Then it changed. Now you better be from The Show if you want to pry away the Butler coach. It took no less than the Boston Celtics to get Brad Stevens out of Butler. Otherwise, and we’ll never know for sure, I suspect Stevens would have retired here.

Holtmann rejected serious interest, and in some cases offers, from basketball schools in the big leagues: Georgia Tech, Missouri and North Carolina State. Missouri was offering a package of more than $20 million. Holtmann said no, staying at Butler for pennies on the dollar. It took one of Holtmann’s handful of dream jobs (Ohio State) to draw him out of Hinkle.

Insider: Holtmann leaves Butler for Ohio State

As I’ve been saying — and as you can now see, right? — it’s taking more and more for a coach to leave Butler. Someday, and that day is here if the next coach wins big enough, he won’t leave at all.

Butler is becoming Xavier, in other words. And not the Xavier that attracted Thad Matta in 2001. No, this Xavier is better than that one, because Xavier has done — as Butler is doing now — some serious evolution.

Xavier used to be Butler, finding great coaches and then losing them. Remember, since 2000 Butler has seen five coaches leave for something bigger (Collier, Matta, Lickliter, Stevens, Holtmann). So has Xavier. And Xavier started losing them in the 1980s.

Bob Staak left for Wake Forest in 1985, then Pete Gillen to Providence (‘94), Skip Prosser to Wake Forest (2001), Thad Matta to Ohio State (‘04) and Sean Miller to Arizona (‘09).

But look now.

Even after reaching four Sweet 16s and one Elite Eight in eight years, marketable (and still young) Chris Mack hasn’t left Xavier, and unless someone huge comes calling — I’m talking bluebloods, like Duke or UNC or Kentucky or Kansas — he’s not leaving. Put it this way: Before Chris Holtmann said yes, Chris Mack told Ohio State no. Because Xavier has become a destination.

How did that happen? The same way it’s about to happen for Butler: The Big East.

When its coaches were leaving, Xavier was in smaller conferences. Staak coached in the Midwestern City Conference, Gillen in the Midwestern Collegiate Conference. The conference affiliation got better, but Xavier remained in homes below the big leagues. Prosser, Matta and Miller coached in the A-10. So did Chris Mack …

Until Xavier joined the Big East in 2013.

That was a game-changer for Xavier, just as it will be a game-changer for Butler.

It’s about competition and stature and the opportunity to win a national championship that has gone 27 times in a row — and 47 times in the past 51 years — to a school from a BCS-sized league.

And, yes, it’s about money. And Butler, which joined the Big East two years ago, is about to be flush with Big East cash. The league is in the first half of its 12-year, $500-million TV deal with Fox, millions that trickle down directly to schools that don’t have to share it with money-guzzling football programs.

More than that, the Big East is printing money from the NCAA tournament, money Butler can only now start to get. The NCAA distributes March Madness revenue to leagues based on the number of tournament games its members played — and does it on a one-year delay. So like the rest of the Big East, Butler only this year is getting its share of the $19.1 million the league earned in 2016 when six teams reached the tournament and Villanova won it.

Next year, in addition to that 2016 revenue, Big East teams will start getting the roughly $22 million the league earned in the 2017 NCAA tournament, when Xavier reached the Elite Eight and Butler went to the Sweet 16. Those revenues are divided among league members and spread over six years. It’s a complicated formula, but the bottom line is this: Butler will make in the ballpark of $500,000 next year in NCAA tournament revenue, and that figure should reach $1 million annually by 2020 or 2021.

Oh, and one more thing:

Ohio State just paid Butler millions to buy out Chris Holtmann’s contract. A source within the Butler basketball community put the buyout at north of $2.5 million.

And Barry Collier will pay his coach at Butler. He won’t pay much at first, no. Never has. Collier tends to hire inexperienced and therefore inexpensive coaches, and their base salary starts small. But by the time Brad Stevens left, he was working on a contract a Butler source put at 12 years and more than $24 million. IndyStar Butler Insider David Woods has Holtmann’s salary this past season at $1.2 million, and it was going to increase to close to $2 million in 2017-18 with reachable incentives had he stayed.

You can see where this is heading. Thanks to Holtmann’s NCAA tournament success and hefty buyout, Butler is flush with cash. Its resources have never been better, and with Big East revenue those resources should only improve.

Woe is Butler? Sure, today. Chris Holtmann is gone, and he was a great coach, probably the second-best coach this program has ever had.

But Holtmann was the tipping point. It’s a lot to ask, perhaps even too much to ask, but Butler AD Barry Collier keeps doing it — so let’s ask him to do it again. If he can make one more superb hire, Butler won’t be in the market for a coach for another decade.

Maybe two.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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Thad Matta: Butler coach, 2000-01, 24-8 record; Xavier coach, 2002-04, 78-23 record; Ohio State coach, 2005-June 2017, 337-123 record. Available.

Todd Lickliter: Butler coach 2001-07, 131-61 record; made NCAA Sweet 16 in 2002-03 and 2006-07. Iowa coach 2007-10, 38-57 record. Fired after three seasons.

Brad Stevens: Butler coach, 2007-13, 166-49 record; five NCAA tournament appearances, Final Four 2010, 2011. Hired as coach of Boston Celtics in 2013; three playoff appearances, including No. 1 seed in Eastern Conference in 2017; 166-162 record.

Chris Holtmann: Butler coach 2014-17, 70-31 record; NCAA appearnaces all three seasons — third round, second round, Sweet Sixteen.