Southern Miss paid football coach Will Hall $30,000 performance bonus he didn't earn

Southern Miss football coach Will Hall was paid performance bonuses that – according to language in his contract – he was not entitled to receive.

The third-year coach guided the Golden Eagles to the LendingTree Bowl game last season that triggered a $20,000 bonus. An additional $10,000 was released when USM won the game 38-24 over Rice.

However, according to Appendix A of Hall’s contract, he should not have been paid that money due to the team’s failure to reach an academic benchmark laid out in his contract.

According to athletic director Jeremy McClain, it was an honest mistake.

“It’s just not something we’ve dealt with before,” McClain told The Hattiesburg American, “and quite honestly a clause that should no longer be in our contracts because APR has changed so much.”

Hall is in the third year of his current contract that pays him $824,000 annually. He could earn up to $850,000 in performance bonuses each season.

Hall declined to comment when asked by The Hattiesburg American.

Amending Will Hall's contract and repaying the money

Now comes the issue of what to do with the already paid out money.

USA TODAY sent an inquiry to Southern Miss athletics on Aug. 15 seeking clarification of why Hall was paid the performance bonuses and whether he would be eligible for bonuses this season because the team also had not met the academic goal this past spring. Fifteen days later, Hall’s contract was amended to delete Appendix A, thus removing the APR requirement.

“It was not on anyone’s radar that one clause had caused an issue for another clause,” McClain said.

McClain, who is responsible for signing off on the bonuses, said Tuesday, an agreement was made for Hall to give back the money via a repayment plan. Specifics on how that will be done are still being decided.

How it happened

Appendix A of Hall’s contract reads as follows:

“For Employee to be eligible to receive a Performance Incentive(s) each year, the Team's multiyear APR score at the time the Performance Incentive(s) is earned must be a 940 or higher or Employee shall forfeit his eligibility to collect such Performance Incentive(s);”

An open records request from USA TODAY confirmed in May that Hall was paid the combined $30,000 based on the bowl win. USM football’s multi-year APR score for the 2020-21 academic year, as published by the NCAA in May 2022, was 934, six points lower than the threshold laid out in his contract.

APR, which stands for academic progress rate, is a measurement that, according to the NCAA “holds institutions accountable for the academic progress of their student-athletes through a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete for each academic term.”

It is calculated only using student-athletes who are receiving financial aid through their sport. One thousand is a perfect score.

The multi-year date range is important to note. The most recent calculation, which was published in April, begins with data from the 2018-19 academic year. Hall was hired by Southern Miss in December 2020.

Normally, the multi-year APR is an average of the last four academic years, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no APR reported in 2019-20. That means there were one and a half years – essentially 50% – of data calculated in Southern Miss football's most recent APR that came from before Hall was named coach.

USM's single-year APR was 958 in 2018-19, 899 in 2020-21 and 945 in 2021-22.

“We know with the transfer portal coming into play over the last few years, APR – although it’s still in use – it’s just the dynamics have changed so much,” McClain said. “That clause is antiquated for multiple reasons and that’s why we’re trying to make the adjustment to get it resolved.”

Steve Berkowitz of USA TODAY contributed to this report.

Sam Sklar is the Southern Miss beat reporter for the Hattiesburg American. Email him at ssklar@hattiesb.gannett.com and follow him on X @sklarsam_.

This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Southern Miss paid football coach Will Hall $30,000 bonus he didn't earn