The Arizona Board of Regents approved a revised academic bonus structure for UA women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes along with an additional $7,500 salary increase during their meeting Thursday at ASU.
The Wildcats will now have to average a GPA of 3.30, instead of 3.10, for Barnes to receive a $30,000 bonus and a $15,000 bonus for averaging between 3.0 and 3.29 instead of the originally proposed 2.70-3.09 range.
The Regents also approved extra tiers: Barnes will receive $45,000 if the Wildcats achieve a 3.69 GPA or above and $7,500 if they achieve between 2.80 and 2.99.
After earning $235,000 last season, Barnes’ salary jumped from the $400,000 approved in June to $407,500, with a retention bonus that effectively raises her salary by $25,000 every season through the end of the contract in 2023-24, when Barnes will be scheduled to receive $507,500.
Barnes’ proposed contract generated a long discussion at the Regents’ June meeting, when Regent Lyndel Manson expressed concern about the jump from Barnes’ previous salary of $235,000 and for an academic component that could reward her for a worse GPA than the team’s 3.19 mark in 2017-18.
However, Regent chair Larry Penley said the Manson and Regent Jay Heiler will now partner to revisit the guidelines for submitting amended contracts from the athletics departments.
“In the last year or 18 months, we’ve seen considerable changes to the contracts from our three universities,” Penley said. “I’ve asked Regent Manson and Heiler to really look at these guidelines, consult with our athletic directors and really come back to this board and present some recommendations, if necessary, for any guidelines so that we can have a policy that perhaps avoids the situation we’ve had here, where a school is working with a coach and then the board says, ‘well, we’d like a little more on that contract.'
“That’s a very tough situation, because contracts have to be negotiated in a way that sometimes requires speed. It requires a bit of agility and a lot of back and forth.”
