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Pete Thamel, Senior College Sports Insider
UConn football coach Jim Mora has agreed to a new contract that includes two additional years that will take him through the 2028 season, sources told ESPN.
The deal includes a raise to an average of $2.5 million annually over the course of the deal, per ESPN sources. He has made $1.81 million in base salary in 2024, and the new deal will increase that base to $2.1 million in 2025.
Mora’s deal comes in the wake of him reviving UConn football in his first three years at the school. He took over a program that went 1-11 in the year before his arrival, and he has led them to two bowl games in three years.
That includes an 8-4 regular season in 2024, which earned UConn a spot in the Wasabi Fenway Bowl against North Carolina. The game will be played at 11 a.m. ET Saturday on ESPN.
If Mora leads UConn to a ninth win, it’ll mark UConn’s first nine-win season since 2007 and just the third nine-win season in school history. UConn went to the Myrtle Beach Bowl in Mora’s first year in 2022, which marked the school’s first bowl game since Bob Diaco led UConn to the St. Petersburg Bowl in 2015.
Mora is a veteran NFL and college head coach who had two stints as an NFL coach in Atlanta and Seattle. He’s in his ninth overall season as a head coach in college, as he took the UCLA job in 2012 and had a successful stint there that included a pair of 10-win seasons. UCLA hasn’t won 10 games in a season since Mora left.
Mora mentioned at the Fenway Bowl news conference on Friday that UConn went undefeated against Group of 5 teams this season, as UConn’s losses came to Maryland, Duke, Wake Forest and Syracuse.
The 8-0 record against teams outside the power leagues, per Mora, marked just one of three teams in the Group of 5 that went undefeated against Group of 5 competition. He mentioned that as a sign of UConn’s growth as a program.
“For this program, we want to start not just competing with but beating power four teams,” Mora said, “and making the statement that we are becoming very relevant again on the football field.”