Bob Stoops, Pat Fitzgerald, Brian Kelly Get Contract Extensions

If there's a recession in college football, it has yet to reach the coaching ranks. Well, not the head-coaching ranks, anyway. In the past week, three head coaches, Bob Stoops, Pat Fitzgerald, and Brian Kelly, have signed contract extensions that will keep them at their present jobs for a while longer.

We start at Oklahoma, where Bob Stoops is now signed through the 2015 season. Despite several big-bowl bloopers, the people in and around the Oklahoma program are happy with their head coach, and who can blame them? In addition to the extension, Stoops also gets a $250,000 raise to $3.675 million a year, plus $700,000 each July if he remains at OU. If he doesn't stay, they are so defriending him.

(From the Mike McCartney/Jermaine Jackson department: Two brothers of famous athletes are head coaches at OU and also got raises. John Roddick, brother of Andy Roddick, coaches men's tennis, while Ryan Hybl, brother of former Sooner quarterback Nate Hybl, coaches men's golf.)

Also staying put for a longer time is Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald, who took the job under difficult circumstances, but has maintained what Randy Walker started. They're pleased with that in Evanston, so Fitzgerald is now also signed through 2015.

Then again, neither Stoops nor Fitzgerald were likely to go anywhere. Fitzgerald hasn't yet built the sort of resume that would get his name tossed into new-job discussions. Few schools can even afford Stoops, let alone his Everlasting Gobstopper of a buyout.

There's one guy, though, who really needed to be signed to an extension, and he was.

That would be Cincinnati's Brian Kelly, whom you have to figure will one day get tired of the Big East. He says he's happy at UC, though, and he must be, since he signed a one-year extension and is now under contract through 2013. Kelly's salary is now within spitting distance of $1.5 million a year. That's good coin but it might not be enough to fend off any potential suitors, and you have to figure that the 47-year-old Kelly has one more move left in him.