Kelvin Sampson’s contract with the University of Houston: How much money does the Cougars coach make?

One of the great resurrection stories in college basketball is being written by the Houston Cougars and Kelvin Sampson. After years of knocking on the national title door back in the 1980’s the program is back on the national scene and Sampson is looking to bring the University their first championship.

From the ground floor to the penthouse

The underlying reason the Cougars are not just tournament regulars, but Sweet 16 regulars is their coach Kelvin Sampson. Sampson is a career coach that has worked his way through the ranks since he was a grad assistant at Michigan State back in the 1970s.

He is now one of the top coaches in the country, and has his team constantly in contention for a national title. Despite the consistency, and the complete rebuilding of the program, Sampson is not in the Top-15 of highest paid coaches. He signed a contract extension in June of 2023 which pays him $4.7 million dollars per season, which puts him 16th on the coaches list. Kansas University’s Bill Self is the highest paid coach in the NCAA racking in $8.8 million a year.

Sampson got his first head coaching gig at Montana State, and it wasn’t long before a major program from a top conference came calling. His first big break came when he went to Washington State, and after seven years with the Cougars, Oklahoma University lured him away from Pullman, Washington. He spent over a decade with the Sooners and took them to the Big Dance in 11 of of 12 seasons in Norman, and got all the way to the Final Four in 2002.

Houston, there is no problem… anymore

One of the most prestigious programs in the country, Indiana, was his next stop but things turned sour quickly. He was forced to resign amid allegations of NCAA violations. He was forced out of the college game for five years, and would spend the next years as an assistant in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Houston Rockets.

His ban for the college game ran out in 2012, but he stayed with the Rockets for a few more years, until the Houston Cougars head coaching job opened up in 2014. It had been a long fall from grace for the Cougars since the 1980s when Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler led Houston to the the NCAA title game in 1983 and 1984. They made the tourney just four times from 1985 to when Sampson was signed as head coach in 2014.

It took a little while to recover the prestige of the past, but in 2018 the Cougars made the Tournament for the first time in eight years, and have made it every year since. They went to the Final Four in 2021 and made the Elite Eight in 2022, and now Sampson and his Cougars are four wins away from their first taste of title glory. First they have to get by the Purdue Boilermakers in the Sweet 16 tonight.

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