Auburn locks in Bruce Pearl as head coach ‘for life’

Bruce Pearl

Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl walks out to the court for the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Kentucky Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022, in Auburn, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)AP

Bruce Pearl has rebuilt Auburn basketball, taking the program to new heights — including the Tigers’ first-ever Final Four appearance and first No. 1 ranking in the AP poll — during his eight seasons on the Plains.

Now, Auburn is ensuring Pearl will be around for the long haul. Pearl and the program agreed to a contract extension Friday, keeping the head coach on the Plains “for life,” athletics director Allen Greene announced alongside Pearl on a video on Twitter.

“Tonight’s a great night,” Greene said in the video. “I got a great surprise for you. We locked him up.”

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During a radio interview Thursday, Bruce Pearl said “when you win, folks are worried you’re going to leave.”

Pearl has done a lot of winning at Auburn — a 113-39 record the last five seasons, with an SEC regular-season title, an SEC Tournament crown, two NCAA Tournament berths, a Final Four appearance and that No. 1 overall ranking during that stretch. Now, any worry that Pearl was going to leave town can be eased.

“It wasn’t that hard,” Pearl said. “I’m grateful for Allen. I’m grateful to the administration, Dr. (Jay) Gogue and General (Ron) Burgess and the folks that worked on this. My family and I are going to be able to stay and be your basketball coach for a long, long time. I’m grateful. I’m humbled. I’m blessed to be your coach. War Eagle.”

Terms of Pearl’s new contract were not immediately made available Friday night, but reports surfaced that its duration is eight years.

His new contract extension comes as Auburn’s Board of Trustees is set to approve upgrades to Auburn Arena, which will include an additional practice gym and renovations to team support spaces, and after reports of interest in Pearl from Louisville, which parted ways with coach Chris Mack on Wednesday.

Pearl’s new deal also comes less than three years after he agreed to an extension through the 2023-24 season following Auburn’s run to the Final Four in 2019. That deal was worth a total of $20.25 million over five years, with an average annual salary of $4.05 million — which is what Pearl is earning this season, according to terms of that contract obtained in September 2019.

Auburn took a chance on Pearl in March 2014, entrusting him to resurrect the program even as he finished serving out a show-cause penalty handed down by the NCAA from his time at Tennessee. In the nearly eight years since, Pearl has more than exceeded expectations on the Plains, bringing the program from SEC cellar to the college basketball penthouse.

He has gone 157-93 during his time at Auburn, including a 67-67 mark in SEC play at the time of his extension, building the program from the ground up in the process. After navigating back-to-back losing seasons in his first two years with the Tigers, Pearl has put together winning seasons on the hardwood in five of the last six years.

He returned Auburn to the NCAA Tournament in 2018 for the first time in 15 years, as the Tigers won the SEC regular-season title for the first time in nearly two decades. The following season, Auburn won the SEC Tournament championship and made a run to the program’s first-ever Final Four, coming up just short of an appearance in the national championship game.

Now this season, after emerging from the other side of a years-long NCAA investigation into the program stemming from the 2017 FBI scandal that ensnared several of college basketball’s top programs, Pearl has helped Auburn ascend to heights never before reached. The Tigers are 19-1 overall, including 8-0 in the SEC, and are riding a national-best 16-game win streak that has propelled the program to the No. 1 ranking in the AP poll for the first time in program history.

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.

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