Buzz Peterson makes $420,000 a year.

For those of you- and I know you are out there- who are gawking over such a cavalier use of personal information, don’t waste your time.

The salaries of UNC Wilmington employees are made readily available to anyone who can complete a simple (it took me three clicks) Google search.

This is in no way a knock on Peterson as a person. I’ve only talked with him through the somewhat formal boundaries of a post-game press conference, so it would be mindless of me to make a judgment of character based on a few conversations in which he has been nothing short of polite and accommodating.

My problem is with how UNCW spends their money. It is an undisputable fact that the UNCW Athletic Department has not made the best financial decisions in recent years. The school even admits it, stating in their Intercollegiate Athletic Review Committee Report of May 2013, “Over the last decade, a lack of continuity, inconsistent leadership, and a patchwork of short-sighted internal decision making have created a number of vulnerabilities.”

One of those vulnerabilities is our athletic budget, which is set at a measly $16 million. And that’s only where the athletic department wants it to be. In actuality, UNCW’s athletic budget sits right at $10 million, which is the lowest in the CAA.

Why then, are we giving almost 5% of our entire athletic budget to a basketball coach? Has our student body convinced the athletic department that because we all wear UNC and Duke shirts, that means we can spend like them too? Going into his fourth year as head coach, here’s a look at how Peterson’s three previous seasons have gone.

2010-2011: 13-18, 8th in the CAA.

2011-2012: 10-21, tied for 8th in the CAA

2012-2013: 10-20, 9th in the CAA

Overall, Peterson’s record at UNCW sits at 33-59. So why again are we dishing out the dollars for a coach who has yet to prove himself as an adequate answer?

Mark Scalf, UNCW’s baseball coach, has won over 700 games for the Seahawks in the 27 years he’s served as head coach and is criminally underpaid, making only $71,753 a year.

I get it; you pay the basketball coaches the big bucks. The basketball team makes the money for the school, so the school puts a majority of the money back into the basketball team. It’s a sound business model that probably works at a lot of schools.

UNCW, however, is not one of those schools. Last year the men’s basketball team operated under a $1.1 million deficit, while being allotted a budget of $1.6 million. You don’t need to be a math major to know that’s not good.

No one’s crying for Peterson’s job – at least, not yet. A rash of transfers and bad Academic Progress Rate scores that pre-dated his coaching tenure have set the program back exponentially. Adam Smith and K.K. Simmons, both key parts of Peterson’s first recruiting class, have transferred to other schools.

Is there an easy answer? No, probably not. The return to prominence for UNCW basketball will most likely be a slow and arduous one. There are so many facets that need to be addressed it is difficult to figure out where to start.

I’m just not sure paying a 33-59 head coach half a million a year is that starting point.