South Carolina Baseball: Mark Kingston gets contract extension
By Kevin Miller
The University of South Carolina’s Board of Trustees met on Friday. Earlier in the week, the agenda for the meeting leaked out, and one of the topics of discussion on the docket was the contract of South Carolina baseball coach Mark Kingston.
After the Gamecocks had their best season since 2016, any contract discussion about Kingston was only going to end in one way: an extension and/or raise for the USC headman.
On Friday, Kingston received both. His contract (originally set to pay him $600,000 per season through 2025) was extended through the year 2027, and the 2-year extension also came with a raise in pay for Kingston. Now, the Gamecock baseball coach will make $725,000 for each of the next four seasons.
Kingston has been at the helm of the South Carolina baseball program for six seasons, and 2023 was just the Gamecocks’ second trip to the Super Regionals and the team’s first 40-win season of the Kingston era in Columbia.
The South Carolina baseball program has not been to the College World Series in Omaha since Ray Tanner was the head coach. Now the athletic director, Tanner believes that Mark Kingston is the man to return the Gamecocks back to the biggest stage in college baseball.
Kingston’s team has the chance to be very good again in 2024. Despite losing a lot of pitching in the 2023 MLB Draft, the Gamecocks are positioned to have an elite lineup again next spring. New pitching coach Matt Williams also will have a surprising amount of experienced arms to work with considering the attrition from last year’s team.
Kingston’s $725,000 salary will make him the 11th highest-paid coach in the SEC, tied with new Missouri coach Kerrick Jackson and ahead of only Kentucky’s Nick Mangione and new Georgia coach Wes Johnson. Nine coaches in the league make at least $1 Million per season.