Nebraska Football: Mickey Joseph’s contract has some interesting clauses

Nebraska football Interim head coach Mickey Joseph was officially given his new contract on Friday, getting a decent little pay bump as he moved up from his former official title as Associate Head Coach/Wide Receivers coach. While the pay increase was interesting, it was a number of other clauses that caught the interest of Husker fans on social media.

Joseph started this season with the Nebraska football team earning $600,000 as a full time assistant. The new contract will afford him a monthly “stipend” of an additional $33,350 per month. The term of that higher pay officially began on September 11, the day that Scott Frost was fired and Joseph was named his temporary replacement.

That means that Joseph will get a pro-rated amount for September, then get the full stipend for October and November. It would seem he’ll get a prorated rate in December, assuming the new head coach will be hired by the end of that month. This is also where things get very interesting for Joseph and the Nebraska football team.

Once the new coach is named, if it’s not a permanent promotion for Joseph, he’ll be returned to his original position, according to the contract. That particular provision briefly started a bit of outrage on Twitter, when it appeared that people thought the university required the next coach to make Joseph his Associate Head Coach.

However, in reality out that the language of returning Joseph to his old position has more to do with what he would receive as part of any buyout, should the next hire decide not to keep him.

The other interesting tidbit in the new contract is that Joseph has some pretty lucrative incentives should he somehow lead quite the turnaround for the Nebraska football program.

Joseph would get $100,000 for winning or tying for the Big Ten West title if he doesn’t get to play in the conference title game. In other words, if he technically ties for the division title but doesn’t win the tiebreaker.

He’ll also get $200,000 if Nebraska football plays in and loses the Big Ten Championship game. He’ll get $300,000 if the Huskers win the Big Ten Championship game.

Finally, should Joseph manage to take the currently 1-3 Cornhuskers squad to a bowl game, he’ll get an extra $150,000. If he somehow managed to make the playoffs, he’d be eligible for anywhere between $300,000 to $650,000 depending on how deep into the playoffs they went.

All of these kinds of provisions are interesting to look at, especially since the Nebraska football team has never dealt with having an interim head coach for this long. However, those bonuses feel more like an unfortunate tease than something Joseph can actually shoot for at the end of the season. At least Trev Alberts and company took the step of including them just in case.