Richard Pitino has had a tough first two years in Minneapolis, as he has won just 14 conference games in two years as Gophers head coach, but the brass at the University of Minnesota has supposedly seen enough to give the coach a raise and an extension.
Via ESPN:
Pitino, who finished his second year as coach of the Gophers, will now make $1.6 million annually. His $500,000 base salary stayed the same; his supplemental compensation was bumped up from $700,000 to $1.1 million.
Pitino’s contract now runs through the 2021 season. As we all know, contracts for college coaches might as well be written on fake paper with fake ink, but this does also raise Pitino’s buyout to $1 million if he left before 2017, and $750,000 if between 2017 and the end of the 2018 season.
Pitino has not had much on court success, but has recruited four star guard Kevin Dorsey and a host of three star talent to the school. If he can develop some of those guys, then the Gophers can potentially build something. Still, it seems a bit premature for the school to give a raise and extension to a coach who has won 20 games in a season just once, never finished better than fourth in his conference, and whose biggest achievement is winning the NIT.
