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FAYETTEVILLE — Sometime in mid-February, as Arkansas was in the middle of a lengthy SEC winning streak, Hunter Yurachek realized he was going to need to pony up to keep his second-year basketball coach.
Considering the athletic department’s budget is down about $35 million because of the financial struggles caused by the pandemic, the Razorbacks’ AD started talking with donors and let them know he’d be calling on them to help take care of Eric Musselman.
What he needed from the Razorback Foundation only got higher as Arkansas climbed into the top 10, earned a 3 seed in the Big Dance and beat Colgate, Texas Tech and Oral Roberts to reach the Elite 8 for the first time since 1995.
“We started formulating that plan - myself and the Razorback Foundation,” Yurachek said. “It continued to grow a little bit as each time we won in the NCAA Tournament, and that's the cost of success, and I'll take that any time."
Ultimately, the UA and Musselman agreed to a new five-year deal that pays him $4 million annually through the 2025-26 season, plus includes a pair of automatic one-year extensions and as many as six $100,000 raises for making the NCAA Tournament.
The contract was signed and announced Wednesday, ending a process that started about two months earlier with Yurachek’s first conversations with donors. Following the official news of the deal, Yurachek and Musselman pulled back the curtain on how it all went down and how certain details came to be included.
Although the pair have a great relationship and an open line of communication at all times, the first month and a half of the contract negotiations was mostly one-sided, as Yurachek didn’t want to interfere with the season.
“Coach and I communicate…on a regular basis and thought it was in the best interest of everybody involved if that went on the back burner and we just focused on winning basketball games through the end of the SEC season and then into the NCAA Tournament and that’s exactly what we did,” Yurachek said. “Shortly after the season was over, coach and I got together and talked about what was important to him moving forward to continue to be our head coach and how I could take care of him and show him that his efforts and what he’s building here are appreciated.”
The Razorbacks’ season ended with an 81-72 loss to eventual national champion Baylor on March 29. Even though that let them out of the bubble and allowed for contract talks to resume, they didn’t really pick up for a week or so because Musselman was busy recruiting the transfer portal.
Within days, Arkansas landed Au’Diese Toney from Pitt. Over the next week, it also secured heralded transfers Chris Lykes out of Miami and Stanley Umude out of South Dakota.
Musselman said he was thankful that Yurachek allowed him to go build his roster before diving into negotiations. Sure enough, three days after Umude signed and Moses Moody announced his intention to enter the 2021 NBA Draft, they came to an agreement in principle - which Yurachek teased with a photo on Twitter late Monday night.
“From my perspective and my wife’s perspective, the timing, on a scale from 1-10, was a 10 out of 10 because it allowed us to focus on the season and then it allowed us to focus on the portal,” Musselman said. “Then once we thought we had our roster stabilized, an agreement got done.”
However, as flexible as Yurachek was with the timing, there was still a sense of urgency to get a deal done because Musselman’s name was starting to be mentioned for other jobs and that security could help with recruiting transfers.
“As rumors start to swirl out there in the national media markets about Eric being a candidate here and being a candidate there, other schools can use that against us in the recruiting process,” Yurachek said. “So it was really important for us to get that locked up before the players that we were pursuing in the portal made other decisions because someone used the fact that I had not signed Eric to an extension against us.”
Minnesota, where his father coached in the 1970s, was the first job to open that Musselman’s name was connected to, but several other big-time schools - Texas, Indiana, North Carolina and Arizona - also opened up.
At no time during the process, though, was Yurachek concerned about him leaving. He told reporters Wednesday that he was comfortable the entire time.
“I trusted him when he told me this was the place he wanted to be,” Yurachek said. “I wasn’t necessarily worried about many of those jobs to be honest with you, because I think what we have here is really special and I think Coach Musselman realizes that as well.”
Despite some of those schools being considered blue-blood programs in college basketball, Musselman said his agent didn’t listen to many of them because he knew Musselman and his wife, Danyelle, were happy in Fayetteville. He fielded some calls, but it was nothing more than that.
“Coming off the season that we just had and laying the foundation that the student-athletes did last year in Year 1, we have a really, really strong brand nationally,” Musselman said. “There was a strong brand before I got here and they’ll always be a strong brand, so to me, this is a premier job.”
The money itself was a 60 percent raise from Musselman’s original contract with the Razorbacks, which paid him $2.5 million annually. It is also a significant increase from the $2.75 million he was set to receive based on the raise that came with reaching the Sweet 16 in that deal.
According to a USA Today database, Musselman’s total pay for the 2020-21 season - which was reduced as part of department-wide cuts because of the pandemic - ranked 49th nationally and 13th out of 13 SEC coaches. (As a private school, Vanderbilt’s salary information was not available.)
His new deal would move him into the top-10 range in the country and put him behind only Kentucky’s John Calipari and Tennessee’s Rick Barnes in the conference.
“I knew we didn’t have the 49th best coach in the country and I knew we didn’t have the 13th best coach in the Southeastern Conference,” Yurachek said. “Coach Musselman deserved to be paid (accordingly)… I think he’s where he should be now.”
Having a top-10 salary wasn’t really important to Musselman, but he acknowledged the sentiment from Yurachek and the Razorbacks.
“Certainly I think everybody wants to feel appreciated and I felt much appreciated before this contract got done,” Musselman said. “My family and I are more than happy and grateful, but we did feel that way prior to.”
If Arkansas fires him without cause, Musselman would be owed a buyout equal to 70 percent of his remaining contract, including any earned extensions.
If he decides to leave Arkansas before the end of his contract, Musselman would owe Arkansas a buyout of varying amounts based on the date of his departure.
Leaving between now and the end of next season would cost him $7.5 million, but that figure falls to $2 million following the final game of 2021-22. It drops to $1 million following the 2023-24 season and $750,000 the year after that.
“I think that shows the level of trust between Coach Musselman and myself and my belief that this is the place that he wants to be,” Yurachek said about the buyout structure. “There’s not anything that needs to be written in a contract with any dollar amount it that will keep him here.”
Yurachek added that he also believes he incentivized Musselman by including a $1.5 million retention bonus he’d receive if he is still the head coach at Arkansas on April 30, 2026.
The contract features a non-compete clause that prevents him from taking another job within the SEC, but one quirk is that he can leave to take the head coach position at the University of San Diego - his alma mater - after April 30, 2024, without penalty.
Based on his comments Wednesday, though, it doesn’t sound like that is something he is planning on taking advantage of in the future.
“It was just kind of a nod to the place that I went to school,” Musselman said. “I don’t think the University of San Diego is going to be competing with the Arkansas Razorbacks.”
Assuming he makes the NCAA Tournament at least twice over the next five seasons, Musselman would be under contract at Arkansas through 2027-28. That would be his ninth season at the school.
He helped the Razorbacks snap their 25-year Sweet 16 drought in Year 2 and has visions of taking the program to heights in hasn’t reached since its glory years of the 1990s.
“We’re building something that we think is really special and we can’t wait to continue moving forward and building off last year’s success,” Musselman said. “There’s a lot of hard work we have to do to continue this thing, but we look forward to doing it.”
