Fresno State just made sure its architect isn't going anywhere. Garrett Klassy has signed a new five-year deal with the school averaging more than $577,000 per year, with a guaranteed total salary of nearly $2.9 million — a number that puts him among the highest-paid athletic directors outside the Power Four, according to ESPN's Pete Thamel.
For context on how far that number has jumped: Klassy signed on as Fresno State's AD in 2024 at roughly $410,000 a year, itself a raise over predecessor Terry Tumey's deal. That original contract ran through July 2029 and included a three-year non-retention guarantee. This new extension resets the terms entirely and reflects just how much Klassy's stock has risen in two years on the job.
The résumé behind the raise is stacked. Klassy has spent close to 30 years in college athletics administration, cutting his teeth at Wisconsin before stops at Alabama, Oregon, Nebraska and most recently Houston, where he helped shepherd the Cougars' jump into the Big 12. That kind of conference-transition experience is exactly what Fresno State needed, because Klassy has now done the same thing for the Bulldogs — leading the school's move to the Pac-12, which officially welcomes them starting in 2026.
Klassy has been at Fresno State since 2024. He's led the school’s move to the Pac-12 and hired football coach Matt Entz. Klassy has a wide swath of prior experience at schools like Houston, Nebraska, Oregon, Alabama and Wisconsin. He's garnered interest in recent P4 openings.
Klassy's biggest swing since arriving, though, was on the football sideline. He hired Matt Entz, the former North Dakota State head coach who went 60-10 with 2 FCS national titles before spending time as a USC assistant, to run the Bulldogs program. Landing a coach with that pedigree — paired with the Pac-12 upgrade — is the kind of dual win that makes an AD hard to poach.
And Fresno State clearly knows it's sitting on a hot commodity. Thamel notes Klassy has already drawn interest from Power Four programs looking to fill openings, which is exactly the scenario that pushes a mid-major school to write a bigger check before a rival does. Locking him up now, with the Pac-12 move and Entz era both just getting started, is Fresno State betting that the hardest part of the rebuild — the hiring and conference realignment — was worth paying up to keep in-house.