Heading into this season, Kyle Flood was a fixture of the generic hot seat talk in the preview magazines occupying your local newsstand. A 2-10 record against bowl-eligible opponents over a two-year period will do that for you.
Scratch all that. On Thursday, Rutgers announced a two-year extension to Flood's contract, keeping him employed through the 2018 season.
"Kyle Flood is a tremendous coach for our football team and has earned the opportunity to lead us into the Big Ten and build on our program successes. With the generosity of private funding, we are pleased to invest in our head coach and our entire staff at a level more consistent with our Big Ten peers," Rutgers AD Julie Hermann said in a statement.
I hate to break it to you, Julie, but your coach is still underpaid.
Flood entered this season as the only Big Ten coach making less than a million a year, and though the new deal gives him a nice bump, it still keeps him in the bottom tier of Rutgers' new home. Flood will make $1.25 million in 2015 (up from a scheduled $1.05 million), and his salary rises $100,000 a year, up to $1.55 million in 2018. All told, Flood will make $6.55 million over the next five seasons.
Meanwhile, across the conference and across the country, Kirk Ferentz earned nearly $4 million last year alone. At Iowa.
At Penn State, a school Rutgers aspires to consider itself a rival to, new head coach James Franklin will make $4 million this year.
Here's how Flood's 2018 contract would rank him among current salaries of the other 13 Big Ten coaches (based on most up-to-date publicly-available information):
Again, Flood's salary five seasons from now places him second-to-last right now. By 2018, when the current crop of coaches earns new contracts or new coaches are hired to replace them, it's a safe bet that Flood will again be where he is right now - the basement.
Speaking of Penn State, the announcement comes two days before Rutgers' first Big Ten game, a home date with Penn State in prime time on Big Ten Network. Both teams enter 2-0. This is the type of game Flood has not won at Rutgers and would be wise to start reversing that trend. Rutgers' next six games offer a much higher degree of difficulty than its previous two. After Penn State, Rutgers visits Navy, hosts an improving Tulane program, and then gets Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Nebraska in succession.
Flood has the opportunity to start performing up to his new contract, starting 48 hours from right now.