Hopson’s USM contract is loaded with incentives

Published 9:04 am Tuesday, February 2, 2016

HATTIESBURG — Jay Hopson will more than triple his salary by leaving Alcorn State to become the head coach at Southern Miss, and will have the opportunity to earn even more depending on how high he can get the Golden Eagles to fly.

Hopson’s four-year contract — the longest allowed by state law — runs through the 2019 season and pays a base salary of $500,000 per year. His first contract at Alcorn paid him $150,000 per year, and he received a three-year extension before the 2014 season for which the terms were not available.

If Hopson leaves for another job before the end of the 2018 season, he must pay Southern Miss $2 million as part of a buyout clause.

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“I think we’ve got a strong mutual commitment to each other,” Southern Miss athletic director Bill McGillis said. “I think it’s a fair contract both for the institution and for Coach Hopson.”

Hopson’s base salary is in the bottom 20 of 127 FBS coaches, based on 2015 salaries. His predecessor at Southern Miss, Todd Monken, made $700,000 last season, which ranked 85th in the country.

As with most college football coaching contracts, however, Hopson’s includes a number of performance-based incentives. Under the deal, Hopson will receive:

• $15,000 for each win over a team from the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast, Big 10, Big 12 or Pac-12 conferences. Southern Miss has games scheduled at SEC opponents Kentucky and LSU next season, and will play Kentucky at home in 2017.

• $7,500 for winning the Conference USA West Division championship and $15,000 for the C-USA title.

• $15,000 for finishing above .500 and playing in a bowl, and an extra $10,000 for winning a bowl game.

• $10,000 for having a team GPA of 2.75 or above for an academic year, or $25,000 for a team GPA of 3.0 or above. He will also get an extra $35,000 if Southern Miss’ APR score is in the top 10 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision programs.

If Southern Miss can make a New Year’s Six bowl — either the Sugar, Rose, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta or Peach — or the College Football Playoff, Hopson will see his salary skyrocket. If Southern Miss were to win a national championship, he would earn around $800,000 in incentives on top of his base salary.

His contract calls for him to make:

• $35,000 for finishing the season in the top 25 of the CFP rankings, plus $10,000 for each week the Golden Eagles are in the rankings. That could add nearly $100,000 to his annual salary if they’re in the rankings from the first week they’re released in October to the end of the season.

• $100,000 for playing in a New Year’s Six bowl, and $100,000 more for winning it.

• $150,000 for reaching the Playoff, plus $250,000 more for reaching the national championship game and an additional $250,000 for winning a national title.

About Ernest Bowker

Ernest Bowker is The Vicksburg Post's sports editor. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post's sports staff since 1998, making him one of the longest-tenured reporters in the paper's 140-year history. The New Jersey native is a graduate of LSU. In his career, he has won more than 50 awards from the Mississippi Press Association and Associated Press for his coverage of local sports in Vicksburg.

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