Gamecocks’ Dawn Staley receives contract bump | USC Gamecocks Sports

COLUMBIA – Dawn Staley is running out of tags to attach to her storied tenure in South Carolina, but the latest one is certainly welcome.

“Highest Paid” has a nice ring to it — or in Staley’s case, three rings.

USC on Friday made Staley the highest paid player in women’s basketball history, raising her current salary (which was $3.2 million this year) to $4 million and extending her contract through the 2029-30 season. Staley is also now believed to be the highest paid female coach in the world in any sport.

Her old contract, presented after the 2021-22 season when she won her second national championship, maxed out at $3.5 million through the 2027-28 season. But Staley led the Gamecocks to a 38-0 season in 2023-24 with his third national championship, which deserved another raise.

The new deal is a maximum of $5.25 million in 2029-30. Staley also received a one-time bonus of $500,000 for signing the contract.

She is now the second-highest paid coach on campus, behind football coach Shane Beamer. Beamer is due to make $6.625 million next season.

LSU’s Kim Mulkey, who is making $3.25 million this year on her way to a maximum of $3.65 million in 2028-29, once had the highest women’s basketball salary. She was surpassed in June 2024 when Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma moved on because of an extension that pays him $3.34 million this season.

Staley has surpassed each one with her new deal, just as she has on the field. The Gamecocks have beaten UConn in five of their last six meetings, including in the 2022 national championship, while Staley has yet to lose to Mulkey in four tries since the coach took over at LSU prior to the 2021-22 season, including last season’s SEC Tournament Championship Game.

The No. 5 Tigers visit Colonial Life Arena to play the Gamecocks on 23 January. Husky no. 6 will arrive on February 16.

Staley’s buyout terms also changed. Under her old deal, USC would have owed Staley $1.5 million if they terminated the deal after this season, with the amount decreasing each subsequent year. Staley would have owed USC $3.5 million if she terminated the deal after this season, with the sum dropping to $2 million in the final year of the deal.

The new terms are that USC would owe Staley the full amount of the remaining contract if she were to be terminated, which could be reduced if Staley were to land another college job. If Staley herself wants to terminate the agreement, she owes USC the full amount of the remaining contract, with one exception.

If Staley were to take an assistant or head coaching job in the NBA or WNBA, she wouldn’t owe USC anything. Staley has been approached by several NBA teams over the past few years to talk about their head coaching positions.

Her incentives remained the same. Staley hit every last year and earned an extra $680,000.

Staley finished her 16th season at USC in April with her third title and just the 10th perfect season in women’s basketball history. She did so despite replacing every starter from a 2022-23 team that went 36-1 and advanced to the Final Four.

She is 269-31 since 2016-17, the year of her first title, and 121-12 in the SEC. The Gamecocks have won eight SEC regular-season championships, eight SEC Tournaments and advanced to six Final Fours under Staley’s leadership, and since the new decade began, USC has been the best program in the country.

Since 2019-20, the non-NCAA tournament season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gamecocks are a sparkling 184-10 and have lost just three regular-season SEC games. They were 32-1 that season and seemed certain to be in the Final Four, but were content to make it every season since.

USC is 126-4 over the past 3½ seasons and has won 91 of its past 93 games, an SEC record 52 straight regular-season games and two national championships. The Gamecocks were ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 for 61 of 63 weeks this season before being knocked off by UCLA, but USC has not lost since and is currently ranked No. 2.