Updated 1:01 p.m. Wednesday, May 21:
Reaching the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014 could be rewarding beyond the baseball diamond for head coach Dan Fitzgerald and the Kansas program.
The Jayhawks’ forthcoming postseason berth — essentially cemented by KU’s series win against BYU and sweep on the road at West Virginia — will automatically extend Fitzgerald’s contract by a year.
That’s under the terms of the six-year deal he signed to become the Jayhawks’ coach in 2022, which would have taken him through the end of the 2028 season, but includes a provision for an “Incentive Year Seven” as a one-time reward for bringing the Jayhawks to the NCAA Tournament.
Fitzgerald, currently in his third season and recently named the Big 12 coach of the year, makes a salary of $530,000 which will increase to $540,000 at the beginning of his fifth year. The extra seventh season of the contract does not include an additional salary adjustment.
Beyond another year tacked onto the end of his deal, Fitzgerald has earned one bonus with more to come.
The Jayhawks’ top-five regular-season finish — second place, in fact, as they had more wins but a lower win percentage than league-leading West Virginia — is worth two weeks’ salary, which currently means approximately $20,385. Making the NCAA Tournament will earn him one month’s salary, or $44,167.
He could garner another month’s salary for accomplishing each of the following incentives: winning the Big 12 tournament, reaching a super regional and reaching the Men’s College World Series. He could also earn two months’ salary for winning the national title.
The automatic extension triggered by an NCAA berth will serve as the first extension to Fitzgerald’s contract. (A Kansas Open Records Act request for Fitzgerald’s original deal and, if applicable, any amendments made since returned only the original deal.) He was the third coach hired by athletic director Travis Goff, after football coach Lance Leipold and women’s golf coach Lindsay Kuhle, and those two have received extensions — Leipold’s in September 2022, November 2022 and February 2024, and Kuhle’s in July 2024. Other coaches hired by Goff since include Nate Lie (soccer) and Matt Ulmer (volleyball).
After Fitzgerald’s fourth year, the 2026 season, is when the contract suggests he and KU Athletics “shall meet together in good faith to evaluate the KU intercollegiate baseball program’s overall status, onfield and off-field progress, and whether the overall status warrants an increase (in) Head Coach’s annual compensation and/or in the length of the contract.”
Inevitably, as happened frequently with Leipold from 2022 to 2024, Fitzgerald’s recent and robust success at a program that has not historically been a powerhouse has caused his name to come up periodically in media speculation regarding coaching openings. If another school were to come calling for Fitzgerald, under the terms of the 2022 contract the damages for cutting short his contract are two years’ compensation if terminated in his third year, which ends June 30, or one and a half years’ compensation if terminated during the fourth. At this point in the deal those amounts are $1.06 million and $795,000, respectively.
Emma Crouch/Kansas Athletics
