COLUMBIA, Mo. _ New Missouri football coach Eliah Drinkwitz's six-year contract will pay him a guaranteed salary of $4 million a year, a source with knowledge of the contract confirmed Monday. Further details will be available when the contract is formally approved and released Tuesday.
The UM System Board of Curators will vote on Drinkwitz's contract at a closed executive session meeting at 8 a.m. Tuesday in Columbia. The new coach will have his introductory press conference at 10:45 a.m. in the Show Me Club in the south end zone facility at Memorial Stadium. The event is open to the public.
Drinkwitz's salary is more than recently fired Missouri coach Barry Odom was making ($3.05 million) under the contract Mizzou negotiated last December, but it's less than what Mizzou was paying former coach Gary Pinkel when he retired after the 2015 season. Before his 15th and final season at Mizzou, Pinkel had agreed to a new contract paying him $4,020,000.
Drinkwitz was making $750,000 as the head coach at Appalachian State. His buyout for leaving App State was approximately $1.735 million.
Based on current salaries, and barring any renegotiated deals this offseason, Drinkwitz will make more in 2020 than at least three other SEC head coaches made this year: Tennessee's Jeremy Pruitt ($3,846,000), Vanderbilt's Derek Mason ($3,368,244) and Mississippi State's Joe Moorhead ($3,050,000), according to USA Today's annual salary list. Louisiana State's Ed Orgeron, just voted the AP SEC coach of the year, is also making $4 million this year, same as recently fired Arkansas coach Chad Morris.
New Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin will start at $3.9 million in 2020, and that figure will increase by $100,000 each year through 2023, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported. New Arkansas coach Sam Pittman will make $3 million in his new five-year deal.
With just one year of head-coaching experience, Drinkwitz will make more than Mizzou's next-highest paid coach, men's basketball's Cuonzo Martin, whose guaranteed salary this year is $2.9 million.
