CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina and men’s basketball coach Hubert Davis have agreed on a raise and contract extension that runs through the next five seasons, according to the terms released by the school on Tuesday.
The sides agreed on the new deal in July, but it wasn’t signed until five months later in December by Davis, athletics director Bubba Cunningham and school chancellor Lee Roberts, among other UNC leaders. The Tar Heels already were seven games into this season when Davis and Cunningham signed the contract on Dec. 4, and later that night, Alabama beat Carolina in a rout at the Smith Center.
Davis’ new deal covers six seasons, including this one currently, and is worth $7.5 million in total base salary and $11.7 million in total supplemental pay. That adds up to $19.2 million in total compensation, not including available bonuses across the lifetime of the contract, which runs through June 2030 — or an average of $3.2 million per year in total compensation.
This new deal boosts Davis’ total base salary by $5.1 million (or $850,000 per year) and total supplemental pay by $2.2 million. That works out to a raise of $7.3 million in total compensation for the Davis, as compared to his previous contract signed in July 2022, when UNC was coming off the magical run to the Final Four and NCAA championship game that capped his first season on the job.
Davis turns 55 years old in May. He was named ACC Coach of the Year last season, as the Tar Heels went 17-3 during the course of league play and claimed the conference’s outright regular-season title for the first time in seven years. His salary hasn’t ranked among what the top 50 coaches in college basketball have been paid, per the USA Today coaching salaries database. That’s something UNC has sought to change, if nothing else for perception purposes connected to its long-held status as one of the sport’s blue-blood programs.
Davis’ base salary is $1.25 million per year on this new deal. A buyout move by the Tar Heels at any point before the contract expires would require the school to pay Davis whatever base salary he has remaining, or $1.25 million multiplied by the number of years left on the deal.
Standard performance bonuses are part of the new contract. Davis will collect an additional $50,000 if UNC wins a conference regular-season title and also $50,000 for a conference tournament title. He will receive a bonus of $100,000 for an NCAA Tournament appearance, and another $100,000 if the Tar Heels get to the Round of 32. He picks up a bonus of $150,000 if UNC makes the Sweet 16, a bonus of $200,000 if the Tar Heels advance to the Elite Eight, and a bonus $200,000 if they reach the Final Four. He earns a bonus of $250,000 if UNC claims the NCAA championship.
Cunningham told Inside Carolina over the summer that UNC wanted to have Davis’ contract extension fully completed before the Tar Heels tipped off this season in early November. But with Roberts’ transitioning from interim chancellor to the full-time job and women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance’s surprising retirement decision in August, the process encountered some delays, Cunningham said.
Davis’ UNC teams have gone 96-42, including 54-23 in ACC league play, since he was elevated to replace the retiring Roy Williams in April 2021. His highs on the job have included defeating Duke in an epic Final Four matchup to reach the 2022 NCAA championship game, and securing the ACC regular-season title last season while landing a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
UNC (18-11 overall, 11-6 ACC) won Monday night on the road at Florida State, and has put together a four-game winning streak. The Tar Heels are playing some of their best basketball of the season, but they aren’t going to capture the regular-season crown in the conference race this time around. Ten games have finished in one-possession endings for UNC, the program’s most in any season in 38 years. UNC sits in sixth place in the league standings with three game remaining. The Tar Heels are one game in the loss column behind fourth-place Wake Forest and SMU (both 11-5 in the ACC), and moreover, they’re staring down the specter of missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons.
Last week, Williams told IC that “nobody has the passion and love that Hubert Davis has” for Carolina basketball, as the legendary former coach voiced his support for Davis. Williams hired Davis away from ESPN prior to the 2012-13 season. And across Davis’ nine seasons as an assistant coach on the UNC basketball staff, Williams groomed Davis for the head-coaching job much like how the iconic Dean Smith mentored Williams all those decades ago. Williams put Davis in charge of coaching UNC’s junior varsity team, just as Smith had done with Williams.
“He’s trying to do the absolute best job that he can with his team,” Williams told IC last week, during a conversation about his role in the hurricane relief efforts in western North Carolina. “And that’s what I focused on all the time. For me, I didn’t care what anybody else said, because number one, I never read it. And so I told my family and friends, don’t read the junk, life will be a lot easier.
“I know there’s criticism out there. But he’s the nicest person I have ever known in my life, who is also fiercely competitive. And that’s a hard combination to have. We’ve got the right guy.”
Also Tuesday, the same day Davis’ contract extension was released, UNC formally announced the creation of a new position for Carolina basketball, officially hiring Jim Tanner as executive director and general manager of the program.
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