Ole Miss head baseball coach Mike Bianco will be given another shot to right the ship after missing the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back years for the first time in his career with the Rebels.
The longtime skipper will return to Oxford for his 25th season at the helm. Bianco’s club finished 27-29 overall in 2024 with an 11-19 record in SEC play. The Rebel’s season came to a bitter end on Tuesday courtesy of a walk-off homerun from Mississippi State centerfielder Connor Hujsak sealed a 2-1 Bulldog victory in the conference tournament.
Since winning the national championship in 2022, Ole Miss has posted a below .500 record of 52-58 and has gone 17-43 in league action during that span, elevating cries among a portion of the fanbase that Bianco can no longer get the job done in the current landscape of college baseball where the transfer portal runs rampant and players are also financially compensated for their name, image, and likeness.
Nonetheless, Athletics Director Keith Carter did not cater to the dissatisfied element of the Rebel faithful. He determined that Bianco deserves at least one more year to correct course, though some would argue that money played a big factor in the administrator’s decision. A contract extension and salary raise after the national title made Bianco the second-highest-paid coach in college baseball at $1.625 million, with four years still remaining on the contract.
Termination of Bianco’s employment this year would force Ole Miss to fork up a total of nearly $8 million in buyouts to cover what was contractually obligated to go to the head coach as well as his assistants. That figure drops significantly following the end of the 2025 season if progress isn’t made and Carter sees the need to make a change.
As the Ole Miss head coach, Bianco has led the Rebels to 18 NCAA Tournament appearances, including eight super regional outings, two stints in the College World Series, and of course, the grand ending of the storybook season in 2022. Bianco has won 1,006 career games and is the third-winningest coach in SEC history.
He is expected to shake up his staff and add at least one fresh face as an on-field assistant come next year.
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