Auburn AD Jacobs: Football coaches’ contracts finalized; hoops arena has name

The contracts of Gene Chizik and his entire staff of assistants have been finalized, Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs told the Opelika-Auburn News in an interview Thursday.

Jacobs said some of the assistants’ contracts were finalized “a couple weeks ago” but the rest have been complete for months.

The Opelika-Auburn News has had a pending open-records request for the contracts of all football staff members, but no contracts have yet been released. Assistant Athletic Director of Media Relations Kirk Sampson said the contracts should be released to all media outlets early
next week.

Chizik’s staff of nine assistants makes a combined annual total of roughly $2.5 million, according to salary data obtained by the Opelika-Auburn News.

Chizik will make a $1.9 million base salary, according to his Letter of Agreement.

Other topics addressed in the interview included:

—Auburn’s new basketball arena will be known as the “Auburn Arena” for the foreseeable future, Jacobs said.

Jacobs said the university is currently in talks with “different people for possible naming rights.”

“If we get somebody,” Jacobs said, “we’ll change the name.”

At this time, Auburn is not taking the distinguished alum route that it has in the past, Jacobs said.

The arena, which has been ahead of schedule nearly since construction began, is still set to open sometime in July or August 2010, Jacobs said.

“With January, February, March, you never know what happens with the weather and those type of things,” Jacobs said. “We look forward to playing our first men’s and women’s basketball games there next year.”

—Jacobs said a surge in football ticket sales over the past three weeks has put the Tigers close to selling out the season.

Jacobs said there is a chance that they’ll be all gone “by this time next week.”

As for Saturday’s season opener, Jacobs said he expects “close to a sellout.”

—Any day now, construction crews should be breaking ground on a new soccer/track complex, Jacobs said.

The “notice to proceed” was just finalized last week, Jacobs said. Construction plans to last 300 days and the facility should be ready to open August 2010, he said.

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