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Kellen Sampson isn’t just a part of Kelvin Sampson’s family. He’s a part of his contract.
Should Kelvin’s Houston team beat Florida in Monday night’s national championship game, there is a chance the 70-year-old coach will retire after a career that began in 1979.
“I’ve had a lifetime contract here for a long time,” Sampson told reporters April 1. “I’ll decide when it’s time to go. I’ll make that decision independent of anybody but my wife.”
If he does, enter Kellen, his son and associate head coach.
In June 2023, Houston gave Kelvin Sampson a new contract that increased his salary from $3.4 million to $4.75 million in a deal that is set to expire in 2027, making him one of the highest-paid coaches in college basketball.
The deal also saw a new paragraph entered into the younger Sampson’s contract titled “Future Employment of Coach,” which officially made Kellen the Cougars’ coach-in-waiting. (The plan officially begins in June of this year, adding a wrinkle to any possible Kelvin Sampson retirement.)
“If after June 1, 2025, Coach has not left the employment of the university for reasons within Coach’s control, and for any reason is not the head coach of team within 14 calendar days after Kelvin Sampson ceases to be head coach of the team, than the university shall pay Coach two million dollars,” Kellen’s contract reads.
Should Kelvin retire and be replaced by Kellen, the contract says, the younger Sampson would get a four-year deal with the school that would pay him $2 million through the first three years of the deal.
Kellen, 39, played for his father at Oklahoma from 2004 to 2007, and has been considered his father’s heir long before it was put in writing. In 2019, the Sampsons led the Cougars to the Sweet 16, the program’s first since the Phi Slama Jamma era of the mid-1980s. Kelvin Sampson’s name began circulating with other job openings, which prompted the school to give him a new six-year deal. As part of that deal, Kellen was named the program’s coach-in-waiting, though no specific language came beyond the title until the 2023 contracts.
“As long as Coach is employed as coach for the Team and Kellen Sampson is employed as a coach of the team, UH acknowledges and agrees that Kellen Sampson shall have and maintain the functional title of “head coach in waiting” for the team,” reads Kelvin Sampson’s contract, which was reviewed by Front Office Sports.
Coaching is full of nepotism and the Sampsons are far from the only family to have such an arrangement in the sport, though it’s rare—but not unheard of—to see it in writing. Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, 65, has his son Steven on staff with the widespread expectation that he will succeed his father whenever he retires, though he currently doesn’t formally have the coach-in-waiting designation that Kellen does. Longtime head coach Tubby Smith had the same setup at High Point with his son G.G., who took over for his father midseason in 2022. G.G. was fired in 2023 after one full season where he went just 14–17.
Kellen’s contract comes with another added bonus for both his family and Houston. If he’s named head coach, he can hire his father as a full-time adviser for up to five years for $300,000 annually, to keep the legendary coach around the program.
