NASHVILLE -- Now that Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl has been rewarded with a lucrative new contract, it's no time to be complacent.

Instead, UT should be planning for his next contract. If you think that's farfetched, you haven't been paying attention.

Pearl has yet to win a postseason game at UT. He hasn't won an SEC championship. He hasn't even matched former UT coach Jerry Green's best season.

And he has just received a salary increase to $1.1 million next season. So what do you do for him if he takes UT to the Final Four?

You might be thinking, "At $1.1 million a year, he's supposed to make the Final Four." If so, you're a stranger to today's coaching market and UT basketball.

Pearl isn't being paid $1.1million to take UT to the Final Four. He's being rewarded for bringing a program back from the dead.

It's not just what he did. It's how fast he did it.

If he can do this much this fast, who's to say he won't have UT in the Final Four in a few years? Call me a wild-eyed optimist -- as readers often do -- but what if he wins a national championship?

Then, you won't just be competing with big-time basketball programs to keep your coach. You will have to worry about the NBA.

And you will have to consider paying Pearl more than your football coach.

I realize how blasphemous that might sound to SEC traditionalists. It's just not the way things are done in these parts.

In the SEC, a football coach can go seven years without winning a conference championship and get a $2 million contract in return. That's the way things are done in these parts.

And that's why I've come up with a contingency plan for keeping Pearl at UT even if it means paying him more than a football coach.

UT could make him a part-time football coach.

"What does he know about football?" you're probably asking.

You could be asking the same of Phillip Fulmer after a 5-6 season.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Pearl would have to help formulate the weekly game plan or even attend football practice. But he could work wonders as a motivational speaker. Besides, there's a precedent for this.

During UT's national championship football season in 1998, Fulmer sometimes had Lady Vols assistant basketball coach Al Brown address the team. Pearl could do that and more.

Football players could relate to Pearl. He's built like a linebacker and sweats more than any lineman on the team.

But don't restrict him to the locker room. Let him lead the team onto the field. Let him chest-bump assistant football coach Trooper Taylor on the sideline. Let him work the crowd.

He could do more for noise at Neyland Stadium than anyone since Arkansas quarterback Clint Stoerner.

Sure, it would mean working a few more hours a week. But for another $1 million a year, I don't think Pearl would mind.

Even if the football season took a turn for the worse, Pearl's presence on the sideline wouldn't be wasted. It would remind fans that basketball season wasn't far away.