Williams had seven seasons left on his UNC contract. It never mentions retirement.

North Carolina men’s basketball coach Roy Williams is retiring with more than seven years remaining on his contract.

Williams, who announced his retirement Thursday morning, agreed to an eight-year contract extension through the 2027-28 season in 2018. The contract was slightly amended in October 2020, and it pushed the expiration of the contract to July 31, 2028 from its previous June 30, 2028 date.

The contracts, both the 2018 extension and the 2020 amended version, say that Williams “at his option shall have the right to unilaterally terminate the entire Agreement at any time upon 120 days prior notice to the University.”

The contract makes no mention of retirement or any other employment or role with the university or athletic department other than “men’s head basketball coach.”

Williams, 70, made more than $3.9 million in the first year of the extension (July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019), The News & Observer reported at the time. His base salary was $541,778 and he received more than $3 million from supplemental compensation ($1.7 million) and from a media contract with Learfield ($1.397 million), a sports marketing company.

Williams’s base salary was set to rise each year, reaching $800,000 in the final year of the contract.

In 2020, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Williams agreed to an amended contract which reduced his base pay for the 2020-21 season from $625,000 to $500,000. His base pay in future years returned to the amount in the 2018 contract with $25,000 raises each year beginning in July.

In 2018, UNC made Williams’s contract with Nike public and outlined the amount he was receiving from Learfield, the athletic department’s media partner. Williams said it was “the correct and proper thing” to disclose the terms, citing changing times and “understanding the environment that college basketball faces now.”

Williams made $250,000 from Nike in the first year of the contract with $10,000 annual increases each year.

As part of the amended deal, Williams received $53,000 for reaching the NCAA Tournament in 2021. UNC lost in the first round. It was the first time in Williams’s career that his team lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Before the extension, Williams’s contract was set to expire in 2020. Coaches typically wish to have several future seasons remaining on their contracts to help with recruiting.

This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 12:44 PM with the headline "Williams had seven seasons left on his UNC contract. It never mentions retirement.."

Brian Murphy

The News & Observer

Brian Murphy is the editor of NC Insider, a state government news service. He previously covered North Carolina’s congressional delegation and state issues from Washington, D.C. for The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer and The Herald-Sun. He grew up in Cary and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill. He previously worked for news organizations in Georgia, Idaho and Virginia. Reach him at bmurphy@ncinsider.com.