Gary Pinkel, the football coach at long-struggling University of Missouri, was given a $550,000-a-year raise this week.

University of Cincinnati coach Brian Kelly got a $450,000-a-year raise and the promise of new practice facilities last week.

Still to be decided is how much Hawai'i's June Jones will command.

But as unbeaten UH (12-0) prepares for its Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl appearance against Georgia, the final game under Jones' current five-year contract, the "price of poker" as athletic director Herman Frazier has put it, is escalating.

Frazier has declined to talk in specifics about Jones' yet-to-be-resolved contract, saying, "this won't be done in the media." But he has said that what the coach will be paid will, in part, be dictated by salary trends nationwide.

"You start at the top and work down," Frazier said.

When the 2007 season started, Jones' salary ranked 66th among 114 Division I-A coaches on one list. He has since dropped to at least 69th, depending on who else gets a raise this week.

Among coaches whose teams are in The Associated Press' Top 25 poll, Jones' $800,016 salary ranks 25th. The Warriors, the only unbeaten team, are ranked No. 10.

Pinkel, who guided Missouri (11-2) to the Jan. 1 Cotton Bowl, will receive $1.85 million per season, plus bonuses. Kelly, who took the Bearcats (9-3) to the PapaJohn's.com Bowl, goes to $1.25 million with an upgrade to $1.35 million in two years, according to published reports.

When Jones' current contract was put into place, the top salary paid in Division I-A was $2.3 million to Nick Saban at Louisiana State. Saban, now at Alabama by way of the Miami Dolphins, has the highest salary at $4 million per season.

"What they (Alabama) did affects everybody," Frazier said.

Indeed, new Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino is to receive $2.85 million — $850,000 more than his predecessor, Houston Nutt, who went to Mississippi, where he will get $1.7 million, an $800,000 raise over what his predecessor had received. New Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez will receive $2.75 million, a $947,000 raise above what he had been getting at West Virginia and $1.3 million more than his Michigan predecessor, Lloyd Carr.

Frazier has begun laying some of the groundwork to make Jones the state's first $1 million-plus employee, though half of Jones' current salary is paid by donors, the school has said. In July, Frazier received approval from the UH Board of Regents to raise the salary to $935,544, which may be exceeded upon UH President David McClain's approval without going back to the regents.

Jones' name has popped up in published reports in connection with two vacancies in recent weeks, UCLA and Southern Methodist, both of which he has denied interest in. "I'm only interested (in preparing for) the University of Georgia," Jones said on Tuesday before boarding the team's charter flight to New Orleans.

Jones, who turns 55 in February, has said he could see himself finishing his coaching career in Manoa.

"Oh yeah, I could," Jones said. "I want to coach, maybe, five or six more years. Then, I want to look back and enjoy this season. I want to coach a few more years, probably five or six and then that's it."

There has been speculation that Jones, who had head coaching stints in the NFL in Atlanta and San Diego, might like one more.

"I'm not looking, but if the right situation comes along I'd always listen," he said. "I would think there will be a lot of turnover in the NFL this year, but whether somebody calls, I don't know."

He said the "right situation" would be one where "whoever I'm working for believes in the same principles that I believe in. It is being at the right place with people who know what it takes to win. Quite honestly, many teams in the National Football League really, from top to bottom, don't really know what it takes to win."

At UH, where the Warriors have led the nation in winning this season, the question is how high will the bidding for Jones go?

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.

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