Fresh off his second national championship in the last three seasons, LSU’s Jay Johnson will become college baseball’s highest-paid skipper.
The former Nevada head coach has agreed to a new contract that will pay him $3.05 million next season, a raise from his previous salary of $1.79 million, per Division I Baseball’s Kendall Rogers.
Johnson’s new deal, if he stays at LSU through the end of his contract, maxs out at $3.65 million annually. The previous highwater mark in college baseball was Tennessee’s Tony Vitello at $3 million with Mississippi State’s Brian O’Connor at $2.9 million.
The LSU board of supervisors must still approve the deal, which is expected to come Friday. Johnson signed a new seven-year contract in 2023 and had completed just two of those seasons before getting the bump in pay.
Johnson began his D-I head-coaching career at Nevada in 2014, succeeding longtime Wolf Pack coach Gary Powers and was an immediate hit. Johnson went 72-43 with the Wolf Pack over two seasons where he maxed out at $117,480 in base pay, per TransparentNevada.com.
After leading Nevada to 41 wins and a Mountain West championship in 2015, Johnson was hired by Arizona where he coached for six seasons before being lured away in 2022 by LSU, whose hiring committee included Nevada athletic director Stephanie Rempe, who worked for the Tigers at the time. His initial deal at LSU was a five-year contract that started at $1.2 million annually.
In just four seasons at LSU, he’s twice got contract extensions and is 190-77 overall and 68-51 in the SEC, winning national titles in 2023 and 2025. Overall, he is 507-248 in his career, which included a season at Division II Point Loma Nazarene in 2005. Prior to his time at Nevada, Johnson was an assistant coach at the University of San Diego for eight seasons. Johnson has reached four College World Series with two championships and a runner-up finish, that coming in 2016 at Arizona.