Charlotte 49ers football coach Will Healy gets raise, extension; AD Mike Hill extended
.JPG "The Charlotte 49ers have extended the contract of football coach Will Healy by two years.")
The Charlotte 49ers have extended the contracts of football coach Will Healy and athletics director Mike Hill.
The extensions were approved during a closed session of UNC Charlotte’s board of trustees Tuesday morning.
Healy, who in his first season led the 49ers to their first winning record and bowl appearance in program history, received a two-year extension through Jan. 31, 2026, Hill confirmed to the Observer.
Healy, 35, is receiving a $55,000 raise, increasing his annual salary to $755,000.
Hill, in his second full year as Charlotte’s athletics director, received a one-year extension and is now under contract through June 25, 2025.
Other details of Healy’s new deal include:
▪ A buyout of $631,250 if he leaves after the first year, decreasing to $505,000 over the remaining years of the deal. Healy’s new team would also have to schedule the 49ers in a home-and-home series.
▪ Receiving 20 percent of any net increase in ticket sales for football games.
▪ A $500,000 bonus if the 49ers win a total of 21 regular-season games over the next three seasons.
▪ An annual $50,000 retention bonus for each of the next three years.
▪ Healy was also offered a $100,000 signing bonus, but asked for that money to be allocated into a pool for his assistant coaches, the source said.
▪ There is an additional $100,000 pool for the assistant coaches for any season the 49ers win eight or more regular-season games.
Healy, who came to Charlotte after three seasons as head coach at Football Championship Subdivision’s Austin Peay, led the 49ers to a 7-6 record and a berth in the Bahamas Bowl, a 31-9 loss against Buffalo.
Other news from the board meeting:
▪ Co-defensive coordinator Marcus West received a one-year contract extension.
▪ Women’s soccer coach John Cullen’s contract was extended two years.
▪ The 49ers’ football locker room will be expanded and renovated. The current locker room was built for Charlotte’s program when it was in the FCS and there were only 63 players on scholarship. When Charlotte moved to the Football Bowl Subdivision and Conference USA in 2015, it was allowed 85 scholarship players.
A donor has already committed $1 million to the project, which will likely cost about $1.3 million and is targeted to be completed over the summer.
New offensive line coach
Lee Grimes, an offensive analyst at Texas A&M, announced on Twitter that he’s Charlotte’s new offensive line coach. Grimes replaces Alex Atkins, who left the 49ers to become Florida State’s offensive line coach. Atkins was also Charlotte’s offensive coordinator; he was replaced by Mark Carney.
Grimes, an offensive lineman for Texas A&M from 2010-15, has also been a graduate assistant at Minnesota. Grimes was offensive line coach and run game coordinator at Division III East Texas Baptist for three seasons.
This story was originally published February 11, 2020 at 10:17 AM.