Brian O’Connor got his bag of money from Mississippi State

The world learned Thursday night that Brian O’Connor, who had signed an extension with UVA just last June that paid him $1.4 million a year, making him the eight-highest-paid coach in college baseball, is now the second-highest-paid coach in college baseball, at $2.9 million a year. Mississippi State Athletics went out of its way to make this public – which is to say, they didn’t make reporters file a FOIA request and wait five days to get a copy of the term sheet. The former Mississippi Agricultural & Mechanical College wanted everybody to know that it had poached its new baseball coach from a blue blood with a $14.2 billion endowment. The shocking annual salary, and four-year contract, puts a different perspective on the hue and cry from O’Connor from last fall and into the spring about Carla Williams not being willing to give him the resources he needed to be able to compete.