Alabama agrees to contract extension for baseball coach Rob Vaughn

Alabama baseball coach Rob Vaughn has agreed to a contract extension with the program just two years into his tenure. News of the contract extension was reported by Yea Alabama.

Vaughn has put together a 74-42 overall record in his two years with the Crimson Tide. He’s 29-31 in SEC play. Alabama has reached the NCAA Tournament in both of his seasons in charge.

According to a report from D1Baseball.com’s Kendall Rogers, Vaughn had received significant interest from other programs since arriving at Alabama. He was reportedly “one of three guys that Texas A&M took a hard look at behind the scenes.”

“We are thankful to have Rob Vaughn as our head baseball coach and look forward to seeing the program’s success under his watch,” athletics director Greg Byrne said. “He has been an incredible addition to our coaching cohort and we are thrilled to reach an agreement to keep him and his family in Tuscaloosa for years to come. Not only is he a fantastic coach, but he is an even better man and leader of our young men.”

Rob Vaughn took over the program after the previous coach’s tenure ended amid a gambling scandal. Brad Bohannon was dumped after news emerged of some suspicious betting activity on an Alabama-LSU baseball game.

The Alabama brass turned to Vaughn, a successful coach out of Maryland, to turn things around. Vaughn had gone 183-115 in six years at Maryland, making three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances in the process.

In taking the job, Rob Vaughn was grateful for the opportunity. He’ll be even more thankful that the Crimson Tide leadership has seen fit to extend him just two years into his tenure.

“It means everything, to be honest with you,” Vaughn told Yea Alabama. “Greg took a chance on me. I was young — 35 or 36 when he hired me, and I’d never coached in the SEC. He went and hired a young coach that had never one time coached in this area, this part of the country, that had never coached in this league, and gave me an opportunity. And I have felt from the second I stepped here super indebted to him for doing that. I never took that lightly. I felt like I had to wake up every day and prove Greg right.”

The next step for Alabama, of course, will be continued postseason success. The Crimson Tide have reached the NCAA Tournament in each of the last two seasons but have failed to win a game once there.

Of course, now Rob Vaughn will get a good deal of time to remedy that. Vaughn, a former player at Kansas State, is just 37 years old.