Last Thursday, Alabama extended head coach Nate Oats through 2027. That’s quite the commitment for the Crimson Tide basketball coach.
Alabama steadily improved from year one to year two under Oats, sporting an 18-5 record this season compared to finishing with a 16-15 mark last year. ESPN’s Paul Finebaum thinks it’s pretty brilliant on behalf of the Alabama athletic department.
Giving the extension now during the regular season was a very smart move according to Finebaum and he explained on the WJOX’s The Roundtable.
“Athletic directors make brilliant decisions and also questionable decisions,” Finebaum said. “They jump the gun. I saw that, before anyone misunderstands me, this was a brilliant decision because you know how good Nate Oats is. I’m more talking in football when ADs misread the room. Greg Byrne has adroitly read the room correctly and he knows how this works. Remember, he was at Arizona when they were used to making deep runs in the tournament. He knows what’s going to happen when that does occur. There are a lot of potentially big openings in college basketball.
“Maybe not this year but over the next two years. Syracuse, Duke, who knows? John Calipari may decide he’s had enough of the critics at Kentucky and go to the NBA. North Carolina could open. Michigan State is a job that I’m sure Nate Oats has always coveted because of his relationship with Tom Izzo. You don’t need that going on in March after Nate Oats gets to the Elite Eight or the Final Four.”
Oats is in just the second year of his tenure with the Crimson Tide but already turned things around in Tuscaloosa. Previously, Avery Johnson led the program for four seasons, making the NCAA Tournament just one time and not until his third season. In Oats’ first season, he went 16-15 with the Crimson Tide, but now has Alabama on track for a 20-win season, something that hasn’t been accomplished since the 2017-18 season and only four times since the 2010-11 season for the program.
Oats is now under contract with the school through March 14, 2027 and his base salary and talent fee increases to $3.225 million annually. According to Cecil Hurts of the Tuscaloosa News, Oats’ buyout based on his previous contract would now be above $10 million over the next two years.
“I wanna be here, so I don’t really care what the buyout is for me to leave here,” Oats said on Friday. “They’re guaranteeing me a lot of money, so if they wanna make me pay a lot to leave, I don’t really care because I’m not planning on leaving. They made them both high. It shows their commitment to me, it shows our commitment as a family to this university, this administration, this city, this state. We love it here. We wanna be here a long time. So you can put the buyout at whatever you want, if I’m not leaving it’s not gonna get paid.
“Shoot, I was a high school teacher not making very much money eight years ago, so I don’t have any money to pay a buyout. I haven’t been making very much money for a very long time, so there’s no plans on me leaving here anytime soon.”
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February 22, 2021 at 10:07PM
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Paul Finebaum on Nate Oats extension: 'Brilliant decision' - 247Sports
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