Contract details emerge for Mark Pope, include $5M starting salary and performance incentives

Mitch Barnhart is betting on Mark Pope as the future of Kentucky basketball, paying him handsomely to be the program’s next head coach. Jon Hale of the Herald-Leader obtained contract details on his five-year deal, one that will pay him $5 million in year one with increases of $250,000 each season from there.

Unlike John Calipari’s contract, though, Pope’s is loaded with performance incentives, highlighted by one-year extensions with every Sweet 16 appearances as long as there are no more than five years remaining on the contract. Those extensions will also trigger $500,000 raises.

From there, Pope will earn $100K for an SEC regular season championship, $50K for an SEC Tournament title, $25K for a team GPA of 3.0 or greater and $25K for a team APR score of at least 975. He’ll also secure a $500K bonus with a national championship, $250K for Final Fours, $100K for Elite Eights and $50K for Sweet 16s with a maximum bonus of $700K each year.

Pope’s $5M salary would have made him the seventh-highest-paid coach in college basketball last season, tied with UConn’s Dan Hurley, according to USA Today.

This compares to the $8.5M John Calipari earned this past season, second-most in the nation among public institutions.

As for a potential breakup with Pope — something none of us are rooting for — that would be pretty expensive for Kentucky. Like Calipari, the school would owe Pope 75% of his remaining salary should he be fired without cause. Should the new head coach decide to leave for another opportunity, he would owe the Wildcats 33% of his remaining salary. That number drops to 20% if Barnhart is no longer the athletics director if and when Pope decides to leave.

Then for some of the other smaller details:

• Entitled to standard benefits
• Two late model, luxury automobiles or a standard university head coach vehicle stipend
• 30 hours of private jet time for personal use
• 20 lower-level tickets for each men’s basketball game
• Eight tickets for each home football game
• 10 tickets for each away or neutral-site men’s basketball game
• Membership to one private mutually agreed upon club

Barnhart is pushing all of his chips in on Pope.