Ray Tanner offers possible timetable for Dawn Staley contract extension at South Carolina
South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner says that contract extension talks are ongoing with women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley.
Tanner shared the news in a radio interview Thursday afternoon on 107.5 FM, adding that he hopes both her negotiating team and USC can come to an agreement before the 2024-25 season tips off Nov. 4 in Las Vegas versus Michigan.
Back in May, Tanner told The State they’d had conversations since the Gamecocks’ historic undefeated season came to an end. In addition to completing the program’s first undefeated season (38-0) and bringing a third national championship home to Columbia, Staley earned her second unanimous and fourth overall national coach of the year honor for 2023-24.
Practice for the 2024-25 season begins next month. If Staley lands a new contract, it’s not unrealistic to expect it to make her the highest-paid coach in women’s college basketball.
She entered the fourth year of a seven-year contact on April 16. Her current deal runs through the 2027-28 season and has her tied with UConn’s Geno Auriemma as the sport’s second-highest paid coach. They both rank behind LSU’s Kim Mulkey, who signed a 10-year, $32 million extension in September — the richest deal in women’s college basketball history.
When Staley’s most recent extension (seven years for $22.4 million) was approved in 2021, she was the highest-paid coach in the SEC, surpassing Mulkey, who made $2.505 million her first season with the Tigers.
Staley’s salary for the 2021-22 season started at $2.9 million, jumped to $3.1 million for this past year and is scheduled to increase to $3.5 million in 2027-28.
This story was originally published August 29, 2024 at 4:24 PM.
