As the University of Alabama’s board of trustees gave its approval in Birmingham to his new contract through the 2028-29 season, Tide men’s basketball coach Nate Oats sat down Friday morning in Tuscaloosa at his news conference table with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

Oats was already under contract until 2027 thanks to an extension he signed two years ago, but Oats said there were “rumors” about his future at Alabama he was facing on the recruiting trail.

Leaving was not in his family’s plan, he made clear within seconds of sitting in his chair.

“Lexi’s a freshman here. Jocie’s in eighth grade. Brielle’s in fifth grade,” Oats said, referring to his three daughters. “They’ve moved enough. We wanted to be here.”

Oats lived in the Detroit area from 2002-13, then spent six years in Buffalo until Alabama hired him in 2019. The move to Tuscaloosa came after Lexi’s freshman year of high school.

“Which is a hard time to move,” Oats said Friday. “They’ve really grown to like it. They’ve got friends here. Lexi is a freshman here, super involved in her sorority and different things. They like it. Tuscaloosa is a nice area to raise a family, too. I’d like to be here a while. Brielle’s in fifth grade, she’s still pretty young. So we’re trying to hang out here for a long time.

“We’re not going anywhere. We didn’t want to go anywhere.”

Oats’ latest deal includes eight-figure buyouts through March 2025, then a $7 million buyout until 2026. His previous deal had a current $9 million buyout that dropped to $7 million later this year and $2.4 million next year.

“The buyout is big for a reason, because I don’t plan on leaving anywhere,” Oats said, repeating his message from two years ago. “I was a high school teacher not very long ago. I’m not paying a $12 million buyout.

“We’re here. It’s a statement that we’re here. We’re building this thing. We plan on continuing to build this thing moving forward. We’d like to continue to bring in top-10 recruiting classes, and this is a statement that we’re going to be here with them the entire time they’re here.”

Alabama’s 2022 recruiting class was ranked No. 4 nationally by 247 Sports and included five-star forward Brandon Miller and five-star guard Jaden Bradley, both starters on Alabama’s team that sits No. 4 in the Associated Press poll this week and atop the SEC at 9-0. Miller could be the top college player chosen in this summer’s NBA draft, while another freshman, forward Noah Clowney, is also a potential first-round pick.

There are not any five-star prospects among the three 2023 recruits Alabama signed early in November, and its 2023 class is ranked No. 19 nationally by 247 Sports. It does not have any committed 2024 prospects.

Oats believes the extension will “help in recruiting,” he said Friday, by combatting “rumors” that he would leave Alabama.

“We’re in social media days, so everybody wants to put their two cents out there,” Oats said. “People try to use it against you in recruiting. It’s obviously been brought up in recruiting. ‘Is he going to be there or not?’ I’ve been asked that by recruits. The answer is real easy now: we’re not going anywhere.

“It helps to bring some stability to the program. We can get back to concentrating on basketball games moving forward.”

Oats said his agent, Rick Smith, handles any interest from other schools if they approach him.

“That’s the one good thing about having an agent is I don’t take any calls from any other schools,” he said. “I basically told my agent to get it worked out here. I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t even know if anybody called him, because he didn’t let me know if they did. So we really didn’t have any talks with anybody else, to be honest with you, and there’s really not that many jobs open right now, anyway.”

Oats’ new deal raises his salary to $4.5 million, with annual raises climbing that figure above $5 million by 2026. His $4.5 million salary is 1,000 times greater than what he once made as a high school coach in Michigan.

“I haven’t been one that has been motivated too much by money,” he said Friday. “If I was motivated by money, I would have quit coaching a long time ago when I was making $4,500 as the basketball coach at Romulus, putting in 40, 50 hours outside of teaching to coach.

“I coach because I love coaching. I love working with the guys. It is nice to be able to compensated for it, finally. There’s a lot of high school coaches out there that put the hours that I put in that aren’t compensated for it like I am.”

Oats is now the SEC’s fourth-highest paid coach behind Kentucky’s John Calipari, Tennessee’s Rick Barnes and Auburn’s Bruce Pearl. Byrne told Alabama’s trustees Friday that Oats is also among the top-10 highest-paid college basketball coaches nationally.

“But I hope it doesn’t change me. I don’t plan on letting it change me,” Oats said. “I’ll say this — we said it at Buffalo when I was debating whether to leave or not — there’s coaches that make a whole lot of money at this level that go home miserable every single night because they’re losing. The money they’re making doesn’t really make them happy.

“So it’s a lot easier job when you’re winning games. I’m motivated by giving our players the best chance they can to win the game by helping them achieve their goals and dreams. Like I said, it’s nice to be compensated for it, but the money doesn’t really make you happy when you go home at night, you go home a loser at night, and you’re still miserable.”

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.