Williams Rates an Extension After Four Years of Winning

Posted on May 22, 2007

UNC men’s basketball coach Roy Williams ’72 has signed a four-year contract extension designed to keep him in Chapel Hill through the 2014-15 season.

Williams’ new contract, worth about $2.6 million annually, establishes him as one of the highest-paid coaches in the country.

The deal includes an annual base salary of $325,000 and a University expense account of $30,000 a year, but the bulk of the contract will rely on supplemental funds to be raised by the Rams Club. The supplemental compensation is worth an average of $1.3 million a year from 2008 to 2015.

Williams, who just completed his fourth season as Carolina’s head coach, will earn $400,000 a year from Learfield Communications Inc. for his radio and television shows and at least $500,000 a year from Nike in a contract separate from the University’s apparel deal.

Should Williams continue his winning ways, the new deal will be even more rewarding. He can earn annual bonuses, worth one-12th of his base salary ($27,083) every time his Tar Heels earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament, advance to the Elite Eight, win their way to the Final Four, and/or have an adjusted graduation rate equal to that of the student body.

“The confidence Chancellor [James] Moeser and Dick Baddour have shown in me by offering this extension is flattering,” said Williams, 56, whose team won the national championship in his second year back in Chapel Hill in 2005.

Williams has a 106-30 record at UNC and has compiled a .800 career winning percentage. In September, he will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Carolina’s eighth coach or player to be afforded that honor.

“He believes in character first, he coaches for all the right reasons and he is a first-rate ambassador of our University,” Athletics Director Baddour ’66 said of Williams.

It is the second big coaching contract that Baddour and the University have authorized in the past six months. New football coach Butch Davis signed a deal in the fall worth $1.86 million a year. The Rams Club now is raising Williams’ supplemental pay, worth about $10.8 million overall, in conjunction with the drive to raise $8.05 million in supplemental compensation for Davis.

Sports Information Director Steve Kirschner said that supplemental pay is part of the deal because UNC has to offer a compensation package equivalent to that provided to Williams by the University of Kansas, where he had a deferred income plan.

“I am excited about coaching at Carolina and look forward to these next eight years,” Williams said. “I just hope my players can put up with me.”

---

Related coverage is available online:

• Just Short of 20 Seasons, Williams Joins Hall of Fame
  News report from April 2007
• The Family Circuit: He bought into the notion of the “Carolina Family” without reservation and he exported it. He balked once at the gates of Chapel Hill, then said yes to the second chance he thought would never come.
  From the July/August 2003 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review, available online to Carolina Alumni members.

---