Beneath Nate Oats' folksy charm, the Alabama coach is playing the leverage game in a high-stakes coaching market

CHICAGO — Nate Oats, according to Nate Oats, is just a high school PE teacher who got lucky. He’s an aw-shucks guy who can’t believe he’s making $5.5 million this year to coach basketball at Alabama. Why would he aspire to anything else, gosh darnit?

“On March 15, my salary went up $500,000,” Oats said Thursday in response to a question about why he hasn’t agreed to a contract extension with one blue-blood job open already and more possibly headed that direction if Bill Self retires at Kansas. “I still can’t believe I’m getting paid this much. I’m coaching basketball, guys.”

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Oats wasn’t the only coach here at the NCAA tournament Midwest regional to be asked in various ways about the North Carolina job, which came open this week when Hubert Davis was fired. But he was certainly the most willing to engage on the topic aside from Tennessee’s 71-year-old Rick Barnes, who deadpanned “I’m from North Carolina” when informed he was the only coach of the four here whose name wasn’t being mentioned. 

The coaching carousel is always the game within the game at the NCAA tournament as agents posture, schools get cornered into making big promises and coaches try to cleverly deflect interest in other jobs while leaving the door open just enough to avoid an embarrassing sound bite that will forever brand them as a liar. 

North Carolina’s opening — arguably the best job in college basketball — is one of those where it’s hard to say exactly the right thing. 

Unless you’re Oats and you don’t have a chance to begin with. As sources told Yahoo Sports this week, Oats is not expected to be a candidate at North Carolina, where there is little appetite to hire a coach who is increasingly viewed as a rogue after his flippant handling of the Brandon Miller situation, this year’s attempt to shoehorn Charles Bediako back into college basketball eligibility after he turned pro in 2023, and the recent arrest of guard Aden Holloway after more than two pounds of marijuana were found in his home. 

“I’m not a guy that’s trying to always jump around,” Oats said. “But the grass is not always greener. I love Alabama. My girls love Alabama. I love working with the administration I work with. I think Greg Byrne is the best [athletic director] in the country. They’re doing everything they can to make sure that we’ve got a competitive program, and as long as we’re able to compete to win championships here, I’d love to be the coach to bring us [Alabama’s] first national championship. So, to me, there’s absolutely no reason to leave here. It’s flattering that a high school guy that caught a couple breaks would be mentioned with some of these jobs.”

Well golly, Nate. Jeepers creepers. A simple high school coach from Michigan has found lifelong basketball love in Tuscaloosa. Forever and ever, amen — and, of course, Roll Tide. 

Here’s the problem with Oats’ narrative, though: As Alabama prepares to play Michigan on Friday night, he has not signed a contract extension — and his buyout drops from an unrealistic $18 million to a more palatable $10 million next Wednesday, April 1. 

And interestingly enough, that contract was signed, sealed and delivered on March 18, 2024 — before Alabama started its tournament run to the Final Four that year. Yet as Oats prepares to coach another Sweet 16 game, the status of another deal that would presumably make it impossible to pry him from Alabama is unclear.

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What we know is that Oats hasn’t signed a new contract, and when I pressed about why, his answer was all over the place: The last contract “was pretty good” and he’s “not going to them asking to redo the contract” every year but “we’ve had discussions” and he’s “not really looking to leave” but the negotiations are “probably getting close” to done even though the school “doesn’t need to be in a huge rush to fix a really good contract.”

Got all that?

Oh, and remember, he’s just a high school coach who used to get paid $500 out of the Warhawk fund at Wisconsin-Whitewater 25 years ago, so Alabama fans probably shouldn’t worry about it too much. But until it’s done — or until Kansas picks someone not named Nate Oats, should Self retire — we probably need to take it all with a Will Wade-sized grain of salt. 

“Nate’s been great when it comes to his contracts,” Byrne told Yahoo Sports. “We have been proactive the entire time that he’s been here and that will continue.” 

Oats is likely being sincere when he talks about being amazed by the numbers on his paycheck. For someone who spent much of his adult life scraping by on a high school coach’s salary, there is probably no quality-of-life difference in making $5 million or $15 million per year. It’s all nuts. 

Nate Oats came from humble beginnings in his career before landing a multi-million dollar salary at Alabama. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)Michael Reaves via Getty Images

But here’s what does matter: In 2026, especially at schools with massive financial commitments in football, who can afford to put together a roster that can contend for national titles year after year? 

Byrne insists they can.

“We’re Alabama,” he said. “We want to be great. Obviously our football program is really important to who we are, but we’ve also shown that we can be really good in basketball, too. We’re good at gymnastics. We’ve won national championships in a lot of different sports, and we’re fortunate we’re in a place that young men and young women want to compete.”

Caleb Holt, however, was not one of them. Unless you’re deep in the recruiting weeds, you probably haven’t heard that name — yet. Ranked as one of the top five players in the country, Holt led Buckhorn High near Huntsville to consecutive state titles in 2023 and 2024.

If this were Alabama football, the state legislature might pass a bill before letting someone like that leave the state’s borders.

Earlier this month, Holt committed to Arizona over Alabama. 

Shortly after that decision, with speculation swirling that Alabama was simply outbid by a school whose fans care more about basketball than football, Oats was asked about Alabama’s NIL situation. His response was illuminating. 

“We want players to come here for reasons that don’t have money at the top,” Oats said. “Having said that, we’ve got to be fair. We’ve got to be in the market. I’ve had conversations with our administration, and we’re going to be competitive.” 

Translation: Alabama isn’t where it needs to be. Is it even possible to get there at a school where it’s much easier to get the boosters excited to open their checkbooks for a left tackle than a shooting guard? 

This isn’t just an Alabama problem. Of the four schools here in the Midwest regional, Alabama, along with Michigan and Tennessee, are the kinds of places where football eats first. The fourth, Iowa State, has an athletic director in Jamie Pollard who recently warned that universities — not athletic departments but entire universities — would go bankrupt if Congress doesn’t step in and control the spending that college administrators are apparently too inept and emotional to do themselves.

None of these schools got here by shopping from the bargain bin. But here’s the way it works now: A job like North Carolina comes open. Coaches of successful teams get their names mentioned. They use the leverage to secure huge NIL commitments. And then, flush with cash, they go into the transfer portal and drive up the price of an already overheated market.

Can anyone sustain that at a football-oriented school where winning in basketball is important but not mandatory to the overall bottom line?

“You hear year in and year out that this isn’t sustainable, and yet all reports point toward the numbers going up,” said Michigan coach Dusty May, whose name will also be linked to every basketball blue blood, including North Carolina. “And when you see the ratings, when you see all that’s happening around our sport it seems as though there’s an influx of everything — money, attention, new avenues to generate revenue. I can’t see the cat going back in the bag. Each school is in a different situation based on their alumni base, how marketable their athletes are, the attention and spotlight on their program, and fortunately we have a lot of things working in our advantage.

“When these businesses or donors believe in a CEO and a vision and a leadership team, they’ll invest until it doesn’t go well. And then it’s time for a new CEO to come in. So we’re not naive to that. We’ve been very diligent from Day 1 to make sure that anything we spend would be spent wisely and anyone we brought in would be very useful.”

It’s why St. John’s coach Rick Pitino was not totally correct Thursday when he said there is “no such thing as a blue blood” anymore. While it’s true that tradition or brand no longer move the needle in recruiting the way they used to, the schools that care the most about basketball are a better bet over the long haul to spend the most money procuring talent. It’s even more of a factor today than it was two years ago when Alabama gave Oats his new deal. 

So despite the folksy “Gee whiz, I never thought I’d be so rich” routine, it’s not hard to see the game Oats is playing. Life is leverage, and with a fourth straight Sweet 16 at Alabama — combined with a potentially monster coaching carousel — Oats holds a golden ticket. 

It probably won’t get him in the mix at North Carolina, where there would be little tolerance for his rough edges. But with a buyout dropping in days and more A-list jobs potentially coming open, there may never be a better time for the self-proclaimed “glorified PE teacher making too much money” to put a couple more zeroes in his bank account. 

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