Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
UNLV’s football team was forced to hire a new head coach following the end of the most recent season after Barry Odom was poached by Purdue. It ultimately landed Dan Mullen with the help of the $17.5 million contract he agreed to, but the school’s athletic director has revealed they don’t have the funds to pay the entire thing.
It’s pretty safe to say UNLV has historically been a basketball school more than anything else, as the football team that played its first season in 1968 has only appeared in a bowl game six times since making the leap to the FBS level a decade after its inception while posting an all-time record of 269-381-4.
With that said, two of those appearances have come in the last two seasons thanks in no small part to Barry Odom.
Odom inherited a squad that went 7-23 during the three years Marcus Arroyo spent at the helm. He went 9-5 in his inaugural season before the Runnin’ Rebels improved to 11-3 last year—which was not only their best record since 1974 but the only time they’ve posted double-digit wins as a DI program.
It was only natural Odom was going to attract the attention of some other teams looking to upgrade at the head coach position, and it’s pretty easy to understand why Purdue lured him away from Las Vegas with a six-year, $39 million contract after bringing the ill-fated Ryan Waters Era to a merciful end.
UNLV subsequently landed Dan Mullen, the skipper who was the head coach at Florida for four seasons before being fired and spent the last couple of years contributing to ABC‘s and ESPN‘s college football coverage while devoting some of his time to advising a high school team in Georgia.
Mullen landed a contract that will pay him $17.5 million over the course of the next five years, but according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, UNLV athletic director Erick Harper recently informed the school’s board of regents it currently only has the funds to cover the first two years of that deal.
Harper met with the board last week and told them the athletic department is currently dealing with between $26 million and $31 million in debt while outlining a plan to “raise money through donations and increased revenue from football games,” saying:
“We have the funds to pay the coach over the next two years. We have been working with our donors to assist with philanthropic dollars.
We have one that has already paid their commitment, and that money is in an unrestricted line and that will be utilized in the future to help with the salaries.”
Harper noted Mullen’s hiring led to an uptick in season ticket sales and added the school will be upping the price to attend games in the hopes of putting a dent in that debt.
There will subsequently be a ton of pressure on Mullen to pick up where Odom left off, so this will be a very interesting situation to keep an eye on.