Gus Malzahn is staying on the Plains for a little while longer.
Auburn inked its head coach to a one-year contract extension through 2020, the school revealed on Monday. The contract was signed on April 1 but not released until today due to Alabama's Freedom of Information Act laws.
The new deal will keep Malzahn's salary steady at $4.725 million through the life of the contract, a break even figure from what he would have earned under the previous contract, just with a slight raise in 2016-17 and a slight pay cut in 2018-19, plus the additional contract year at 2020. Malzahn's previous contract, agreed to just before his Tigers won the 2013 SEC championship, would have paid him $4.35 million in 2016 and $5.1 million by 2019 but still averaged to $4.725 million annually.
The new contract does not increase Malzahn's buyout either way, but would raise the cost to dismiss Malzahn from $6.7 million to $8.95 million. Should Malzahn leave for another job he would owe the total contractual amounts owed to any assistants not taken with him to the new job or retained by the new coaching staff.
"He's a brilliant offensive mind," Auburn AD Jacobs said at the SEC's spring meetings last week, via AL.com. "Took us to two national championships; once as a coordinator, once as a head coach. There's a bunch of schools in this league that would love to be in our position with a guy like him.
"It's tough league, this league is tough every day. It doesn't matter what year it is, year in, year out, how many years you've been here, whatever it may be, but there's no doubt about that he is the right guy for Auburn."
Malzahn is 27-13 in three seasons as Auburn's head coach.