Baddour gets three-year contract extension

By: By Bill Cole | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: March 27, 2009

Dick Baddour, North Carolina's athletics director, has agreed to a three-year contract extension.

The school's board of trustees met in Chapel Hill yesterday and unanimously approved the extension. Baddour is in his 12th year as athletics director, but his contract was to expire on June 30.

Baddour said that Chancellor Holden Thorp met with him shortly after taking office and said that he wanted Baddour to stay on in the job and oversee North Carolina's 28 sports programs.

"He said that he wanted to make sure that we got it going in a timely way," Baddour said in Memphis, Tenn., where he is attending the basketball program's appearance in the NCAA Tournament South Regional.

"He hoped that I would stay longer. He's been very, very supportive. He expressed to me a strong interest in having me lead the program and to work with him and to help him understand college athletics."

Baddour's contract will now run through June 30, 2012, which will give him 15 years on the job. He has been at UNC for 42 years. UNC has won 10 national championships and 60 ACC championships in his time as athletic director.

Baddour's salary will remain at $295,000. He was given the possibility of two additional bonuses. He will receive a month's salary if the baseball team makes the NCAA Tournament and a month's salary if the school's Academic Progress Rate meets approved standards.

Baddour also receives bonuses if the men's and women's basketball teams reach the NCAA Tournament and if the football team is invited to a bowl game.

"I just don't think in terms of the ‘retirement' part," Baddour said. "I'm just so involved and so busy and so concentrated on what we're doing."

Baddour said he has at least several specific issues he wants to handle in the next three years, starting with finances.

"That comes along with meeting the demands of the individual sport programs and the things that they need, and the things we need to do to keep the right people in place to do what they do and give them the resources that they need," Baddour said.

"We've got to think about the facility projects we have under way. You have to think about some of the sport programs that haven't enjoyed the success that we'd like for them to, and how can we help them get to that level."

■ Bill Cole can be reached at bcole@wsjournal.com.