Iowa Extends Gary Barta’s Contract, For Some Reason

Iowa fans were greeted with a not-so-typical news dump Wednesday afternoon when the athletics department dropped this bombshell:

Curiously, as of this writing, the release has only been sent to ~select~ members of the media and has NOT been posted on the Iowa athletics website. I wonder why!

(I know why)

So, the terms of the extension, which the university is calling an “amendment,” for nefarious reasons, are as follows:

• Barta, who’s contract is currently set to expire on June 30, 2021, is extended through June 30, 2024.
• He keeps his base salary of $650,000/year, but built-in deferred compensation brings that number up $350,000 each year on the remainder of his contract. So for 2020-21, Barta’s salary reaches a million bucks. From 2021 on, Barta will earn $1.05 million for his services.
• It is worth noting Barta is heading into his first year of a three-year term on the College Football Playoff Committee.

So, come 2021, the University of Iowa is gonna be paying Bloodpunch just about $400K shy of the sum they had to pay out for a discrimination lawsuit settlement that Barta caused. I’m no economist, but this seems like a lesson in the sunk cost fallacy.

In total, Barta’s $3.3 million pay bump is about half of the $6.5 million the University has had to payout on his behalf due to lawsuits.

Barta’s numerous instances of complete and total incompetence have been well-documented. We won’t run through them all here, but most recently, he dragged his ass across the club room at Carver-Hawkeye Arena and called it Hershey’s Syrup—all at the expense of Iowa play-by-play guy Gary Dolphin.

Then, he did the same fuckin’ thing two months later.

The last time Barta was in the news was a couple weeks ago, when he announced extensions for Iowa’s soccer coach, men’s golf coach, and director of cross country/track & field. Those were all kind of no-brainer decisions, and one could make the argument that Joey Woody’s extension was long overdue.

So, for better and worse, we’re left with Barta through 2024. As Iowa fans, we have the luxury of coaching security in men’s and women’s basketball, wrestling, and of course football. The window is small for Barta to fail, but he sure does love giving it a shot now and then.

I have to assume that Bruce Harreld and the rest of the shot-callers in Iowa City are praying that by 2024, Kirk Ferentz has properly set the table for Brian Ferentz to take over as head football coach, allowing papa bear to come in and clean up the mess Barta has made.

Until then, we can only wait for the next crisis of Barta’s manufacturing.