Miami head football coach Chuck Martin is not going anywhere.
Following a MAC Championship and a bowl berth in 2019, the RedHawks signed Martin to a five-year contract extension, according to a tweet put out by the account “Miami RedHawks Football Recruiting,” which was later confirmed by a University source.
The extension will not be publicized by Miami, according to a University source, in light of the 40 jobs being cut in July. As a result, neither Martin nor athletic director David Sayler were available for comment on this story.
The new contract was expected, as Martin’s former deal had him as the head man of the RedHawk football program through 2020. In Martin’s new contract, he will make $550,000 annually through Jan. 31, 2025, according to the contract which was obtained by the Observer.
The extension keeps Martin as the seventh highest paid coach in the Mid-American Conference. Toledo’s Jason Candle makes $1.15 million annually.
In five years as Miami’s head coach, after being hired in 2014, Martin has turned the RedHawks into one of the most consistent football programs in the Mid-American Conference. When he arrived at Oxford following a stint as an assistant coach at Notre Dame, Miami was coming off of an 0-12 season.
However, in the past three seasons, no team has a better record in conference games than Martin’s RedHawks. His team has also been bowl-eligible in three of the last four years.
Martin signed the extension March 4, along with University President Greg Crawford, Sayler and Vice President for Finance and Business Services David Creamer.
The contract extension keeps Martin as the highest paid employee at Miami. As of November of 2019, his annual earnings of $531,746 edged out Crawford’s salary of $520,047.
Martin’s hefty payday is defended by the amount of revenue his program brings in. According to the school’s Gender and Equity Report in Athletics for 2019, the football team brought in over $9.2 million during the year.
This football dominated revenue stream is common throughout college sports, though at other schools it is seen on a much larger scale. For example, according to USA Today, Ohio State football brought in over $200 million during the 2018 fiscal year.
Through lucrative away games against premier programs such as Ohio State and television deals with ESPN and other major media outlets, Miami football accounted for over a quarter of the Miami athletic revenue for the year.
The extension binds Martin to Miami, preventing him from pursuing other opportunities should other college programs take notice of his success and try to lure him in. This trend is not uncommon among MAC football programs. Notable college head coaches including former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly and Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck all coached at MAC schools before jumping to larger, more prestigious teams across the country.
Martin’s new contract makes that impossible without consent from Miami.
Martin, however, is not a young up-and-coming prospect for bigger programs. The 52-year old coach was a head coach from 2004 to 2009 at Grand Valley State where he won two consecutive NCAA Division II National Championships in 2005 and 2006.
In 2010, Martin left Grand Valley for South Bend where he coached as an assistant at Notre Dame before taking the Miami job.
Martin and his wife Dulcie live in Oxford with their children Max and Emma.
