Seems like anything less than four years is a poke in the eye, and really you'd want to go five or six years so the coach can recruit a couple of years worth of kids who know he'll be there for their career at the school. But beyond that, you might run into buyout issues if his system tanks and runs into four or five years of losing badly.
What is the proper amount of time for extending a successful coach?
- Thread starter EagerFan
- Start date
Remember he has 3 years left, so a 4-year extension puts 7 total years on the deal.
"A successful coach?!?!"
As is usual for NU, this is not just any gig. It's a difficult needle to thread. And if you want to keep him long term and not go through this exercise every three years, I think you need to think big ... beyond the money and length.
First of all, I hope Jackson and CC have enough of a relationship that they can have a heart to heart. "Do you REALLY want to stay?? Or do you not think you can do what you need to do here?"
If he says he wants X years or to find a place where he can get to the Final 8 as often as NU gets to a tournament, then it's a different conversation.
But if he and his wife are TRULY dedicated to making this work, I think he needs some help beyond salary. A strong salary and contract length is just the start. but I don't know how any D1 coach can work at the portal-era pace for 10+ years. Some programs have "GMs." I'm never sure what that means, but I think of it as an agent/coach for the program. Maybe two guys?
Also, if you're thinking about a 7-10 year plan, Jackson needs to start thinking about whether the next guy is a CC guy.
Any kind of construction promises? Increased salaries for the assistants.
I think the discussion become one of:
a) "What can this be?"
b) Investment and infrastructure
As is usual for NU, this is not just any gig. It's a difficult needle to thread. And if you want to keep him long term and not go through this exercise every three years, I think you need to think big ... beyond the money and length.
First of all, I hope Jackson and CC have enough of a relationship that they can have a heart to heart. "Do you REALLY want to stay?? Or do you not think you can do what you need to do here?"
If he says he wants X years or to find a place where he can get to the Final 8 as often as NU gets to a tournament, then it's a different conversation.
But if he and his wife are TRULY dedicated to making this work, I think he needs some help beyond salary. A strong salary and contract length is just the start. but I don't know how any D1 coach can work at the portal-era pace for 10+ years. Some programs have "GMs." I'm never sure what that means, but I think of it as an agent/coach for the program. Maybe two guys?
Also, if you're thinking about a 7-10 year plan, Jackson needs to start thinking about whether the next guy is a CC guy.
Any kind of construction promises? Increased salaries for the assistants.
I think the discussion become one of:
a) "What can this be?"
b) Investment and infrastructure
My question obviously stems from all the board drama about losing CCC, but I was thinking beyond just NU - or trying to anyway.
That's certainly true and I wasn't considering the competitive market.
Most of my experience comes as an NU fan, and I'm still amazed at how quickly a fan base starts rolling out the guillotine on a coach that doesn't meet their fans often insane (to me) expectations.
I suppose in the NIL/portal world, "top" coaches are now expected to just buy a new team every year and be instantly competitive. That certainly seems to be what Michigan has been bragging about the last few days.
It does seem to me that if a coach is recruiting high school kids, and they expect to use all four years of their eligibility, it has to be better coming from a position of 'I'll be head coach your entire career at CollegeU' rather than 'I've got two years left on my contract, so maybe we'll both go somewhere else'. I dunno.
And schools often have to buy out those (7 year) contracts. Taking it from 3-5 definitely makes sense but hard to take it past 6. Exception might be adding year after each year where team reaches stipulated success level
Yeah I’m not saying extending to 7 is a good idea. But I can’t imagine it’s less than 5. It’s weird to me that he went to back to back NCAA tournaments and finished top 3 in the conference in back to back years (literally unprecedented) and still comes out the other side with only 3 years left on his deal. That’s criminal incompetence.
The NIL is trash, but I assume NU isn’t broke if they can’t burn money like that on a stadium. Cant understand how the AD could allow Collins to be dangled like that.
Gragg was the AD. He was forced to extend CCC after the first tourney bid which took CCC to 5 years. He was successful a second time but basically no one was in charge as Gragg had been demoted and denutted and Jackson was not here yet. When he got here, August 28 2024, he had no relationship with CCC, FB was starting and within a couple months they were headed into the BB season and tendency is to not be negociating during the season. Now is basically the first time such negociations could take place
It would most likely be a 2-3 year extension on the current contract potentially rewriting the current part of the deal at a higher salary and taking the contract to 5-6 years. Likely hard to take it to 7
And top programs have an unlimited number of people ready to pony up those buyouts. Last I looked, we are not in that group.
