Deal Confirmed

Kalen DeBoer enters the Huskies’ national championship game with UW waiting with a hefty, new deal.
First, the Washington Huskies and the Michigan Wolverines compete for the national title. Next, each school’s athletic departments will make big-money moves to secure their coaches for future opportunities at the championship game. Kalen DeBoer, 49, was just two seasons away from his first Football Bowl Subdivision head-coaching position at Fresno State, and the Huskies (14-0) were on a 21-game winning streak heading into Monday night’s national championship game versus Michigan (14-0) at NRG Stadium.

UW, along with then-athletic director Jennifer Cohen, who recruited DeBoer from Fresno State to replace fired Jimmy Lake in November 2021, renewed DeBoer’s contract after the season. That was for DeBoer, who won 11 games in his first season with the Huskies, including the 2022 Alamo Bowl over Texas. DeBoer’s current contract with the Huskies pays him $4.2 million and continues until 2028. That is the 44th-highest coaching compensation in college football, according to USA Today’s yearly database of public institutions. It ranks sixth in the collapsing Pac-12. DeBoer’s work is neither the 44th best in college football nor the seventh best in the Pacific-12.

That’s so evident that Troy Dannen, the Huskies’ new athletic director, knows DeBoer deserves another contract. As in last month. “We’re in a good place,” Dannen told Adam Brenerman during his NextUp episode from Houston. Dannen took over for Cohen this autumn after the latter left Montlake to become the athletic director at USC.