Minnesota Gophers football coach Jerry Kill has agreed to one-year contract extension and a raise, the university announced Friday.
The extension locks Kill up with the University of Minnesota through 2019. His raise is worth an estimated $300,000, which boosts his 2015 salary to $2.5 million, the Star Tribune reports.
“Coach Kill is a great leader and an asset, not just to our football program and our athletics department, but to the university community and the state of Minnesota,” university President Dr. Eric Kaler said in a statement, via the Pioneer Press. “I have a great deal of respect for how Coach Kill runs his program. His intense focus on developing young men into outstanding students, athletes and citizens perfectly reflects the mission of Gopher Athletics.”
The Gophers have won 8 games each of the last two years and last season they finished one win shy of playing for a Big Ten championship.
“We want to win a Big Ten championship,” junior quarterback Mitch Leidner recently said, via Sporting News. “That’s been our goal the last couple years, but this year we feel that it is way more attainable than it’s been in the past.”
CSN Chicago notes that Kill has had a knack for sending Gophers to the NFL. Ra’Shede Hageman, Brock Vereen, Maxx Williams, Damien Wilson, David Cobb and Cedric Thompson have all been drafted over the past two years, and ex-Gopher safety Derrick Wells is trying to earn a spot with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who play the Vikings at TCF Bank Stadium on Saturday night.
