Auburn gives Gus Malzahn a one-year contract and restructured agreement.
Auburn coach Gus Malzahn signed a one-year contract extension through December 31, 2020, for $4.725 million per year.
Malzahn is 27-13 in three seasons with the Tigers, but only 13-11 in SEC play. The Tigers have lost ten of their last thirteen games against Power 5 opponents.
Malzahn signed the new contract on April 1, but the school did not announce the news until Monday.
Except for the one-year extension, the new contract is worth the same as his previous one. Malzahn’s prior deal paid him $4.35 million in 2016, with $250,000 increments over the next three years to $4.6 million (2017), $4.85 million (2018), and $5.1 million (2019).
The new contract pays him $4.725 million year for the next five years, with no wage increases. The entire contract sum is the same as the previous arrangement for 2016-19 ($18.9 million), with the exception that Malzahn will get an additional year.
Malzahn’s buyout stays the same. If he is dismissed by Auburn, the school will repay him $2.237 million for each remaining year of his contract.
– I was running circles around the bar at Captain Tony’s, becoming angrier with each lap. It needed to be there. I knew it was there. But, where the hell was it?
It was Monday. Jan. 22, 2024, is precisely two weeks after the College Football Playoff national championship game. My wife and I were in Key West. The goal of the retreat was to calm my college football brain in the rum-soaked winds of the United States’ southernmost point.
But at this point, the mission had shifted. Because, as has usually been the case when I’m wearing flip-flops on the streets of the Conch Republic, all I can think of is a college football coach.
Only this time was different.
This was the first time I was in the land of Ernest Hemingway when I knew Mike Leach would not be. There would be no accidental sightings as he glided by on his rusted beach cruiser. No waking up to 3 a.m. texts that read, “Did I see you walking down Duval tonight?” No calls from Pullman or Starkville because he knew I was there and to demand, “Listen, if you are going to stay in that hotel where you do at the end of the street then you have to get in that water and swim because that’s where Tennessee Williams swam every morning.”
None of that was going to happen during this visit because Leach died Dec. 12, 2022. Now, like Hemingway, Williams, Leach’s beloved Jimmy Buffett and all the pirates and rumrunners who fascinated Leach so much that he bought a home in Key West to tap into their spirits, his spirit now floats around the island. As much a part of its atmosphere as key lime and conch fritters.
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