Kansas State Wildcats agree to new contract, raise for football coach Chris Klieman
Kansas State has agreed to a new contract with Chris Klieman that will pay the football coach $23.5 million and last until 2026.
The new deal was reached early into his second season with the Wildcats. He has guided the team to a 10-6 record, including a 2-1 start this year. In his first year in Manhattan, he helped K-State go 8-5 and play in the Liberty Bowl.
Under his new deal, Klieman will make $3.1 million in 2021. His salary will increase to $3.5 million in 2022 and then $4 million in 2023 and then stabilize at $4.3 million throughout the final three years of his deal.
Klieman is making $2.5 million this season under the original contract he signed after leaving North Dakota State for K-State before the 2019 season.
“Chris and his staff have done a phenomenal job in their short time at K-State, and we are excited that he will be here for a very long time,” K-State athletic director Gene Taylor said in a statement. “We had been in discussions for an extended period of time, but certainly with sensitivity surrounding the COVID pandemic, we wanted to wait and finalize this contract once we were back to playing football and had some sense of certainty about the season.
“Chris is a tremendous fit, someone who cares a great deal about his players, and most importantly, he and his staff are terrific football coaches and we look forward to many more years under his leadership.”
Klieman’s new contract also contains some unique performance-based incentives.
One of them even triggers an extra year’s salary of $4.3 million getting tacked on to the end of his deal. According to a copy of his contract, Klieman will receive a one-year extension every time the Wildcats win eight games and play in a bowl game between now and 2023. Because K-State will only play 10 games this season, Klieman can also trigger that bonus by winning six games and reaching the postseason in 2020.
Klieman will also receive a pair of retention bonuses worth $200,000 and $250,000 if he remains the coach at K-State in March 2022 and March 2023.
His buyout also changed under this new contract. If K-State chooses to fire Klieman without cause, the school must pay him a sum ranging from $4.3 million (in the final year of his deal) to 75% of his remaining base salary (with five or more years remaining on his contract) depending on timing.
Should Klieman choose to leave K-State for any reason before his contract expires, he will owe the Wildcats $5 million between now and 2022. That amount will then decrease by $1 million each year until it reaches $1 million in 20206.
Klieman’s old salary ranked last among all Big 12 coaches, according to the USA Today salary database. His new salary for 2021 will jump him closer to the middle of the pack and ahead of Kansas coach Les Miles, Texas Tech Matt Wells and West Virginia coach Neal Brown.
Klieman began coaching in 1991 as a graduate assistant at Northern Iowa. He became a candidate for the K-State job after he guided North Dakota State to a string of FCS national championships.
Taylor agreed to new contracts with all of Klieman’s assistants last spring, bringing their combined salaries up to nearly $4 million. He said he hoped to reach a new deal with Klieman in the future.
That became reality Monday.
“My family and I love K-State and we are very fortunate to call Manhattan home,” Klieman said. “I appreciate Gene and President Myers for trusting my staff and me to lead this program, and we will continue to work as hard as we possibly can each and every day to not only win football games but also to help the young men in our program grow and be successful. We have made great progress in just under two years here, but we still have a long way to go to get where we want to be, and we are excited for the future of K-State Football.”
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 11:53 AM.