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A 10-3 season and tie for first in the Pac-12 South Division has netted another payday for Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham.
Utah athletics announced Friday afternoon that Whittingham's contract has been extended through 2020 and will pay him $3.3 million per year. Entering his 12th season with the school, Whittingham has been extended twice in just over a year: He took a raise last January that improved his salary to $2.6 million per year.
According to USA Today's most recent coaching database, Whittingham's new deal would place him among the 30 most-compensated coaches in the country last season. Among schools who publicly report coaching salaries, Whittingham would be the third-best paid Pac-12 coach behind Washington's Chris Petersen and UCLA's Jim Mora.
Neither Whittingham nor athletic director Chris Hill was available to take questions, but the school issued statements from both in a news release.
Said Whittingham: "I am grateful for the support and commitment shown by Chris Hill and President [David W.] Pershing with this contract extension. It gives further stability to our football program and what we are trying to accomplish. We are excited about the future here at Utah and the recruiting class we will sign next Wednesday."
He's 95-46 over his tenure at Utah, ranking as the most tenured coach at a Pac-12 school. In the past two seasons, he's led Utah to a 19-7 record, most recently tying USC for first place in the South Division (although the Trojans won the tiebreaker to advance to the Pac-12 title game). Utah has been to the Las Vegas Bowl in back-to-back years and won both games.
The structure of Whittingham's last extension, which ran through 2018, saw an annual increase in base salary by $100,000 that would've paid him $11 million over the course of the deal. If his new contract — which has not yet been released by the U. — is structured similarly, Whittingham would make $17.5 million through 2020.
The release did not specify if Whittingham's extension also included raises for his staff. For the first time in eight years, the Utes will have the same offensive coordinator configuration of Aaron Roderick and Jim Harding for consecutive seasons. The Utes also promoted longtime safeties coach Morgan Scalley to defensive coordinator in January.
Hill has given Whittingham two raises since The Tribune reported after the 2014 season that Utah's athletic director had tension with his football coach. Since then, Whittingham was a rumored candidate for the USC job after Steve Sarkisian was dismissed, but stayed put throughout the offseason coaching carousel. Hill said late last year that he and Whittingham were "on the same page" in contract discussions.
"We are excited about the contract extension for Coach Whittingham and look forward to continued success in the Pac-12 Conference under his leadership," Hill said in the release.
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