Pinkel agrees to three-year contract extension
The deal guarantees $1.3 million per year.
Published Nov. 20, 2006
AMES, Iowa - For the second year in a row, Missouri's game before Thanksgiving turned into a story of two coaches going different directions.
A season ago, Kansas State coach Bill Snyder announced he would retire after the game with MU, who would head to a bowl game despite losing in Manhattan, Kan.
This year, the home team would again be losing its coach after the resignation of Iowa State's Dan McCarney. Again, MU would head to a bowl game regardless of the outcome. The only difference is that coach Gary Pinkel would enter sporting a three-year contract extension.
It made no difference. Once again, the Tigers sent an outgoing coach out with a win, losing 21-16 and handing the Cyclones their only win in the Big 12.
After the game, MU athletic director Mike Alden said that the timing of the announcement of Pinkel's extension was purely coincidental.
"We've been working on this quite some time," he said. "We felt once it was completed, let's let people know that it's completed."
Alden added that it didn't really matter what happened in the last two games in terms of Pinkel's future.
Pinkel said that the contract negotiations did not affect his preparations or the team's against the last-place Cyclones.
"Nobody even knew about it," he said.
According to a news release sent by MU athletic spokesman Chad Moller, the extension was finalized this past Friday and will increase Pinkel's guaranteed salary by $225,000 to $1.3 million. Despite the increase, his base salary of $255,000 will remain unchanged.
Without the extension, Pinkel's contract would have expired at the end of 2008. The new deal allows him to tell recruits that he is signed on to be in Columbia for their entire collegiate careers and ends speculation that the next coach the Tigers send out with a win will be their own.
"I think it's important to give your staff and coaches every tool that they need," Alden said. "This commitment by the university to his program is a clear indication of our support for Gary, and is done with the intent of helping him take that next step that we are so eager to see."
After agreeing to the extension, Pinkel expressed gratitude for the opportunity to continue to build the program at MU
"I am very proud of what our staff and our kids have accomplished to this point, and I am even more excited about our potential together for the future," he said. "We have a great fan base that deserves championship-caliber football, and that's what we intend to deliver."
See a related story on the Tigers' 21-16 loss to Iowa State.