Paul Chryst has one well-documented property, and its story is neatly bookended by his time as Wisconsin’s head football coach. In June 2015, shortly after taking the job, he paid $1.2 million for a house in Middleton, a suburb west of Madison, and the seller was Bo Ryan, the university’s men’s basketball coach. In late May 2023, after he had joined the staff at Texas, the house went on the market at $1.65 million, and it sold that November for $1.475 million.
It is a substantial property: 9,330 square feet with five bedrooms and five and a half bathrooms on 1.82 acres, with an indoor pool.
This guide covers what is documented about it, what the three prices attached to it actually mean, and what the record does and does not establish about where he lives now.
Paul Chryst’s house at a glance
| Detail | Record |
|---|---|
| Location | Bridle Ridge, Middleton, Wisconsin |
| Size | 9,330 sq ft, five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms, 1.82 acres |
| Built | 2005 |
| Bought | June 2015, from Bo Ryan, for $1.2 million |
| Listed | May 2023, at $1.65 million |
| Sold | November 2023, for $1.475 million |
Who is Paul Chryst?
Paul Chryst is an American football coach, born in Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in Platteville, where his father, George Chryst, was head coach at UW–Platteville. Coaching runs through the family: his brother Geep was an offensive coordinator with the San Francisco 49ers, and another brother, Rick, served as commissioner of the Mid-American Conference. Paul played quarterback at Wisconsin, coached at several programs including Oregon State, and was Wisconsin’s offensive coordinator before becoming head coach at Pittsburgh from 2012 to 2014. In 2015, he returned to Madison as the Badgers’ head coach.
He went 67–26 there, winning the Big Ten West in 2016, 2017, and 2019 and six of his seven bowl games. He held the job until 2 October 2022, when Wisconsin dismissed him five games into his eighth season and named Jim Leonhard interim coach. Reports at the time put his buyout at around $19.5 million. He spent the 2023 season at Texas as an offensive analyst and special assistant to head coach Steve Sarkisian, and has been out of a coaching role since.
In November 2025, he was reported as a candidate for the Oregon State head coaching vacancy, at a programme where he had earlier been offensive coordinator. The job went to JaMarcus Shephard, who was hired on 28 November.
The Middleton house, and who he bought it from
Chryst bought the Middleton property in June 2015, the year he took over the Wisconsin programme, and the public sale record puts the price at $1.2 million. The seller was Bo Ryan, then the Badgers’ men’s basketball coach, who was coming off consecutive Final Four runs. Ryan later addressed the obvious question directly, making clear that his retirement the following year was not connected to the sale.
The house was built in 2005 on a lot that changed hands the year before, so it went up during Ryan’s own tenure at Wisconsin, which began in 2001. Two head coaches at the same university trading the same house is an unusual piece of local sports trivia, and it says something about how narrow the market is for that kind of property in the Madison area. Middleton is where senior university staff and executives tend to buy: close to campus, quiet, and with lots large enough to matter. The house is in Bridle Ridge, a subdivision in the Middleton school district on the western side of the Madison area, in Dane County; this article gives the neighbourhood but not the street.
Inside the house
It stands on 1.82 wooded acres. The main bedroom suite is on the ground floor, two more bedrooms share the upper floor with a loft, and the walk-out lower level holds most of the leisure space: a recreation room with a bar, a gym, a home cinema, and an indoor pool with a hot tub. There are three fireplaces, two offices, a screened porch with a built-in grill, a large patio and deck, and a garage for three or more cars. The indoor pool is the detail that stands out, and it makes sense in a state where outdoor swimming is a short seasonal proposition. The 2023 listing carried a full set of photographs of these rooms, but no video tour or magazine feature on the house has appeared in the coverage reviewed here.
The 2023 listing and sale
The house went on the market at $1.65 million at the end of May 2023, and the Wisconsin State Journal covered the listing. The timing followed his career rather than his dismissal. Wisconsin let him go in October 2022, but the house stayed off the market through the winter and was listed only after he accepted the role on Sarkisian’s staff in Austin.
It sold on 17 November 2023 for $1.475 million, according to the property’s public sale history. That was $175,000, or roughly 11 percent, below the asking price. The buyer has not been named in any press coverage, and this article does not name them.
What the numbers show
Chryst paid $1.2 million in 2015 and sold for $1.475 million eight years later. That is a nominal gain of about $275,000, or roughly 23 percent, before agents’ fees and whatever he spent on the house in between. Set against a buyout reported at $19.5 million, the house was never the main financial event of his departure.
Of the three figures, the asking price is the one most often quoted as the house’s value, and it is the least reliable. $1.65 million was what the sellers hoped for; $1.475 million is what a buyer paid. The 2025 property-tax assessment of about $1.57 million is a valuation for tax purposes, not a market price, and it was made after he had sold.
The reason most coverage stops at the listing is structural. At public universities such as Wisconsin or South Carolina, where Dawn Staley coaches, contracts and buyouts are public documents that reporters read closely. Property sales are public too, but they sit in a different record system, and local papers rarely return to a house once the listing story has run.
Where does Paul Chryst live now?
His current home is not a matter of public record. What is on record is that he no longer lives in the Middleton house he bought from Bo Ryan: it sold in November 2023, and this article will not guess at where he moved.
Beyond that, he is a Wisconsin native with family roots in Madison and Platteville, and he has not held a coaching job since the 2023 season at Texas, which means no employer currently requires him to live anywhere in particular. He may have bought elsewhere in the Madison area, stayed in Texas, or moved somewhere else entirely, and none of those can be confirmed from the available evidence.
Coaches often become considerably less visible in property terms once they leave a job, a pattern also visible in the limited documentation available on Jon Scheyer and other programme heads. The most defensible summary is that Chryst sold his Wisconsin coaching house once the job that justified it had ended.
Sources
- Wisconsin State Journal on the $1.65 million listing, the property’s size and features, and the June 2015 purchase from Bo Ryan.
- Public property records, via Redfin, for the sale history (June 2015 at $1.2 million, November 2023 at $1.475 million), year built, lot size, and tax assessment.
- Wisconsin State Journal video of Bo Ryan on the sale and his retirement.
- CBS Sports on his dismissal in October 2022.
- 247Sports on the reported buyout figure.
- CBS Sports on his 2023 role at Texas.
- Yahoo Sports on the 2025 Oregon State search.
- Wikipedia for his coaching record and family background.
