Florida International head women’s swimming & diving coach Randy Horner has received a contract extension and a substantial raise that will keep him in Miami through the 2026-2027 season.
Horner’s prior contract was set to expire at the end of the 2022-2023 season and was valued at $88,000 per year. The new deal, back-dated to the start of the 2022-2023 season, will run through April 30, 2027 and comes with it a new salary of $98,000 per year. That represents an 11.4% raise since his last contract took effect about 19 months ago.
The new contract includes an escalating retention bonus paid on October 1 each year. In 2022, that bonus was $4,000, in 2023 that bonus would be $6,500, in 2024 it would be $9,000, in 2025 it would be $11,500, and in 2026 it would be $14,000.
The new contract also comes with an increase in potential incentive-based performance bonuses.
| Old Contract | New Contract | |
| APR Tier 1 | >=960, $2,000 | >=985, $2,500 |
| APR Tier 2 (not cumulative) | >=1000, $4000 | >=1000, $5,000 |
| GPA Tier 1 | >=3.1, $2,500 | >=3.0, $2,500 |
| GPA Tier 2 (not cumulative) | >=3.5, $5,000 | >=3.5, $5,000 |
| Conference Championships | $5,000 | $2,000 |
| Consecutive Championships* | — | $1,000 |
| NCAA Tier 1 | Top 20, $10,000 | Top 25, $15,000 |
| NCAA Tier 2 (not cumulative) | Top 10, $15,000 | Top 10, $20,000 |
| NCAA Tier 3 (not cumulative) | Top 4, $20,000 | Top 4, $25,000 |
| Team NCAA Title | $25,000 | $50,000 |
| Individual Finishes Top 20 at NCAAs | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| Individual NCAA Champion | $5,000 | $5,000 |
| Individual NCAA Qualifier | $1,000 | $1,000 |
| Individual Zones Qualifier | — | $500 |
| Conference Coach of the Year | $2,000 | $5,000 |
| Generates over $25,000 in fundraising | $2,000 | $2,000 |
The one to take special note of is the consecutive conference championships bonus. This rider essentially carries an escalating bonus for winning consecutive conference titles. The example given in the contract is that if the team wins in 2023, 2024, and 2025, Horner would receive $1,000 in 2024 and $2,000 in 2025.
The existing streak will not be included, but FIU entered the 2022-2023 season having won eight consecutive championships in Conference USA. Titles will get tougher in 2023, however, as FIU women’s swimming has moved to the American Athletic Conference. While that conference will change substantially in the next few seasons, this year it includes teams like Houston, SMU, Rice, North Texas, Florida Atlantic, Tulane, Cincinnati, and East Carolina.
That new conference takes the top two teams, and four of the best five teams, from the old Conference USA and joins with the best teams from the AAC.
FIU finished 36th at the 2022 NCAA Championships where freshman Christie Chue finished 14th in the 200 breaststroke for three points. Diver Maha Gouda also represented the Panthers at NCAAs.
Horner first became coach of the Panthers in 2010. Since then, he has coached 8 conference swimmers of the year and 6 conference divers of the year. He is also a 7-time recipient of the Conference USA Coach of the Year award, including each of the last three seasons.
Coach Horner has done a wonderful job and has an outstanding program at FIU. Well deserved.
Looks very reasonable.
THAT is a bonus structure that speaks to swimming! I’d be willing to bet a lot of mid major coaches would like that criteria for bonuses, even for half those dollar amounts. Applause to the AD and sport admin for committing to the sport and Randy!
I like an incentive-heavy coaches contract. I wish more sports would adopt them. A winning football coach is worth $10-20 million/year, but a losing one comes with a fat buyout. Bigger incentives could release the anchor around athletic departments’ necks, while offering successful coaches more upside.
Jim Harbaugh receives $500k for defeating Ohio State
How much of an athletic departments budget can be covered through donations, if any? I know some programs have scholarships that are covered, but what about salaries (Stanford comes to mind).
As far as I know, 100% can be covered by donations. I can’t think of any reason for any limit on donations to an athletics department/university.
They’re all designated non-profits, either as a standalone entity or via the university that they’re part of. And I don’t think there’s any restriction from the NCAA.
Because it’s still academia, they usually run big donations as endowments. It would take a BIG endowment to cover the budget at a school like Stanford (not that you need to cover the whole budget). Around $3 billion, depending on how much costs escalate in this new world.
This is a very interesting view behind the curtain. Thanks