
I’m about to reveal the story behind the best-kept secret at the University of Virginia: that Carla Williams signed a five-year contract extension last month.
A Freedom of Information Act request got me a copy of the new deal, which Williams, who was hired as athletics director at UVA in 2017, signed on Dec. 18 and runs through May 31, 2030, and will pay her $1,405,470 annually, with an annual performance bonus of $300,000, “based on meeting our mutually agreed goals,” according to the language in the contract.
From the UVA FOIA office
In addition, Williams would get a 3.5 percent bonus relative to her base salary and licensing payments each year the UVA Football program plays in a bowl game, and a 3.5 percent bonus relative to her base salary and licensing payments for a Top 10 Director’s Cup finish.
That 3.5 percent figure would equate to $40,126.45, for a max of $80,252.90 if both of those goals would be achieved in a year.
The new contract represents a $300,000-plus increase in total annual compensation from the four-year contract that she signed in 2021, and paid her $1.09 million per year, with an annual performance bonus set at $250,000, and no additional bonuses related to football bowl games or Director’s Cup finishes.
You’ll want to know about what happens in the event that she is terminated “without cause,” i.e. not for negligence or legal malfeasance, but, just because – yeah, UVA owes her the rest of the money in the deal.
What’s going on here
Williams’s contract status has been the subject of speculation mainly because of me. In the course of trying to get a complete picture of the status of the top employees of UVA Athletics last year, I filed a FOIA request for a copy of Williams’s contract and any offers on the table for an extension, which I assumed, based on what I knew about a vote to reaffirm Williams as the AD for a new five-year period to begin in 2025 by the UVA Board of Visitors at its June meeting, would reveal to me that a new contract was in place, or that work was being done to get one in place.
The answer that I got back was a copy of her 2021 deal, with nothing about anything related to an extension.
The 2021 deal included a deadline for Williams and UVA President Jim Ryan to “meet for the purpose of discussing renewal or nonrenewal of this agreement” at “no later than six months before the expiration of this term,” which would translate to Nov. 30.
I checked in on the contract situation with UVA Athletics in November and again in December, and was referred back to the FOIA office, which spit back out a copy of the 2021 deal in responses to FOIA requests on Nov. 4 and Dec. 3.
With no clarity coming from that front, I next reached out to members of the Board of Visitors to try to get information on what was being said about the situation with Williams and UVA behind the scenes.
The sense that I got from those conversations was that there was a major disconnect between the BOV and Williams, with one Board member telling me that things had gotten to the point behind the scenes that Williams had begun interviewing for other jobs in the fall.
No one within UVA Athletics pushed back against those assertions as I reported on them, and it’s notable, to me, anyway, that Dec. 18 came and went without a formal announcement from the University that Williams had signed an extension.
One would think, at first glance, that there would be a benefit from a PR perspective to getting that information out there, particularly with the first big item on the agenda for UVA Athletics – the search for a new men’s basketball coach.
More background on what may be going on
I’m wondering how the Williams contract situation fits into the ongoing political power struggle between Ryan and the Board of Visitors, which now has a supermajority of members who were appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Thirteen of the 17 members of the BOV are Youngkin appointees, and this is significant vis-à-vis Jim Ryan because Ryan was appointed by a Democrat-majority Board in 2018, and a Democrat-majority Board moved in 2022, two months after Youngkin was sworn in as governor, but three months before he could make this first appointments to the UVA Board, to extend Ryan’s contract through 2028.
The Youngkin appointees have been very public in their pushback against Ryan, with one, Bert Ellis, a double-‘Hoo who made a mint in broadcasting, pledging to wage “a battle royale for the soul of UVA,” as the Youngkin group has raised issue with everything from what they have termed the University’s “Woke” diversity efforts to nitpicking the policies of the University Guides service.
ICYMI
- UVA suspends ‘woke’ student tour group, at behest of Youngkin’s far-right zealots
- Bert Ellis offers ‘apology’ for insults of UVA board, administrators revealed in texts
A more tangible, and much more pressing, issue that has been raised to me in private conversations with UVA leaders is the letter of no confidence from 128 UVA Physicians Group-employed faculty in September demanding the removal of UVA Health CEO Dr. Craig Kent and UVA School of Medicine Dean Dr. Melina R. Kibbe.
One BOV member has expressed to me that Ryan’s kid-gloves handling of the UVA Health situation has raised the stakes in the pitched battle between the BOV and the administration, with the status of UVA Health, a $2.5 billion-a-year business, being much more substantial in terms of being a cudgel than the plaintive complaints from the Youngkin appointees about “Wokeness.”
ICYMI
- UVA Health allegations to be reviewed; findings will have very limited audience
- Review promised in response to letter seeking resignation of two top UVA employees
Just speculating, but I will wonder aloud here if the decision on Williams’s status made by Ryan, who held the final say on the details of Williams’s contract, was influenced at all by the ongoing back-and-forth between the president and his bosses.
Basically, was this a sort of power play from Ryan?
That might be overstating it, but it’s worth consideration.
Where we are going forward
Williams is no longer a lame-duck AD as of Dec. 18 – odd as it is that the University of Virginia wanted to keep that news under wraps, given the public speculation, initiated by my reporting, over the past six months.
Her first task will be hiring a new head coach for men’s basketball, which Williams, back when Tony Bennett stepped down in October, had signaled would involve a national search.
To that end, a committee of former players and coaches has been actively working on identifying and vetting candidates, as we’ve been reporting here, and I reported earlier this week that the group of major players had narrowed that list, for the time being, at least, to three – Marquette coach Shaka Smart, VCU coach Ryan Odom and Furman coach Bob Richey.
ICYMI
Take this for what it’s worth, but, one member of the committee was seen in attendance at VCU’s home game this week with Saint Louis.
Was that a scouting trip, or just an evening taking in a game featuring two of the top teams in the A-10?
One would expect that the current interim head coach who took over in Bennett’s stead, Ron Sanchez, a long-time Bennett assistant, would also be in the running, though the feeling is that the team’s 8-9 record, and clear regression since an early 3-0 start that included a double-digit win over an improving Villanova team, would be a strike against Sanchez’s candidacy.
Williams, as AD, would obviously have the final say on the new coach, and if she was the impetus behind putting together the committee, you’d have to consider that a wise move.
The other biggie on her agenda going forward will be the football program, which is very much in flux with Williams’s 2021 hire, Tony Elliott, mired with an 11-23 record in his three seasons at the helm, with his 2024 team losing six of its last seven to finish with a 5-7 mark.
Williams gave Elliott a six-year, fully guaranteed contract when she hired him in 2021, meaning he has three years left on his deal, and the added pressure of millions of dollars of investments from the money folks to boost the ability of the program to compete in the NIL/transfer portal market.
ICYMI
It would seem to stand to reason that Elliott will enter the 2025 cycle on the hot seat, with the expectation to show progress from 3-7, 3-9 and 5-7 seasons – meaning, at least getting his team into a cold-weather bowl next December.
What Williams would do if next fall’s team underachieves will be a focal point for her critics.
Her record is much stronger in the non-revenue sports, with the women’s swimming program at four national championships-in-a-row-and-counting, baseball coming off back-to-back College World Series appearances, and teams up and down the menu at VirginiaSports.com competing annually for ACC titles.
But those are called non-revenue sports for a reason – the operating surpluses that pay the bills for those programs to do what they do come from football and, to a lesser extent, men’s basketball.
The more-than-half-empty stadium in the fall has given way, with men’s basketball at 8-9 in the interregnum between Bennett and whoever is next, to a noticeable number of empties in JPJ this winter.
ADs are ultimately judged not on how many championships the non-revenue sports bring home, but on the bottom line, which is a function of the success in football and men’s hoops.
Carla Williams has her extension.
Now, let’s see what she does with another five years.
Side note as we wrap up
I guess it’s just a coincidence that I’ve been the only reporter following the Carla Williams story for the past six months, and it just so happens that another reporter apparently filed a FOIA request on the same day that I did to get a copy of this new contract.
The timing of the two of us independently making our requests had to have lined up, given that the other guy got his response from the FOIA office this morning when I got mine, right?
It wasn’t because somebody wanted to make sure a sanitized version of the story got out.
Nope, that isn’t what happened here.
Just … a coincidence.