Callahan gets new contract
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By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
When the formalities were over Tuesday and it was just conversation in a hallway, someone jokingly asked Bill Callahan if he loved football enough to coach it for free.
“If I didn’t have to feed my family I would,” the Husker head coach said with a laugh.
Of course, if a guy had his druthers, he’d rather coach football because he loved it and make $1.75 million a year.
In what Husker athletic director Steve Pederson called an “important day for Nebraska,” it was announced that Callahan has signed a new five-year contract that takes him through the 2011 season.
It’s a two-year extension from Callahan’s initial contract with Nebraska, which was signed upon his arrival in 2004 and took him through the 2009 season.
That contract provided an annual compensation of $1.5 million.
The replacement contract has no buyout clause and will secure Callahan $1.75 million annually, with the potential inclusion of $425,000 in bonuses.
“I’ve never believed in buyouts in contracts because I believe this: If a coach only stays at a place because he can’t get out, then you probably don’t have a coach who wants to be there,” Pederson said.
Bonuses, the athletic director said, would be given for any of the following successes: winning the Big 12 North, winning the Big 12, bowl appearances, BCS bowl bids and national championships.
Pederson said the contract was actually agreed on late last week, but wasn’t signed until Tuesday morning.
For his part, Callahan was more interested in steering the conversation to this Saturday’s game at Wake Forest than his new contract.
“I don’t ever get all hung up on this stuff,” Callahan said. “I never got into coaching for all these things. I just coach because I enjoy coaching.
“I never looked at it about the money. I never looked at it about the next job. I always did the best I could in the situation I was in and things always worked out better for myself.”
The 51-year-old Callahan has a 23-15 record as he stands in his fourth year at the Husker helm.
He said it’s not for him to say whether his job performance warranted a new contract.
“I think that (Chancellor) Harvey (Perlman) and Steve have made that decision,” Callahan said. “I appreciate it and am grateful.”
His critics would bemoan that he has not yet produced to Husker standards. The highest-ranked team Nebraska has defeated since he’s been coach is 20th-ranked Michigan.
His supporters would praise his strong recruiting classes and the fact that last year the Huskers won their first Big 12 North championship since 1999.
The only opinions that really matter are Pederson’s and Perlman’s.
“This is a combination of looking at the work that he’s done and the work that’s going on right now,” Pederson said. “And we believe that there’s going to be great success into the future, and we know we have the right person leading the program.”
Pederson said Callahan has even exceeded his expectations.
“It all depends on whether you look at where we really were, or whether you look at where we maybe hope we were when he took over,” Pederson said. “He did what great coaches do, and that is, he looked realistically at where we were and said, ‘Here’s how we’re going to get this fixed going into the future.’”
Pederson praised Callahan’s ability to assemble a coaching staff.
“It’s as fine a coaching staff as I’ve ever seen assembled, and I’ve seen some pretty good ones.”
And he lauded his recruiting.
“We were recruiting at the highest level the day he arrived.”
Callahan’s new contract places him fourth among Big 12 football coaches in terms of base salaries.
Bob Stoops of Oklahoma makes $3,450,000 a year. Mack Brown of Texas, $2,910,000. Dennis Franchione of Texas A&M, $2,012,000.
Callahan’s base salary reportedly ties with South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier for 17th nationally among Division I coaches and sits ahead of the likes of Florida State’s Bobby Bowden, Penn State’s Joe Paterno, Michigan’s Lloyd Carr and Georgia’s Mark Richt.
As for the higher-paid guys like Stoops, Brown and Nick Saban, who just signed a deal that will soon have him earning more than $4 million a year to coach Alabama, Callahan said: “Good for them. I don’t even concern myself with that.”
From Callahan’s vantage point, the extension was most critical in helping him in recruits’ living rooms.
Recruits and their parents want to know a coach will be around awhile before committing four years to him, he said.
He thinks the extension should also quiet any murmurs by people who say that, deep down, the former Oakland Raiders coach really wishes to return to the NFL.
“As I had stated many times,” Callahan said, “I wanted to be here, and I think it’s indicative now that I am committed to being here at Nebraska.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
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