When Wisconsin takes the field Saturday at Northwestern, Jim Leonhard will coach. Sometime before Feb. 1, 2023, the man Leonhard replaced, Paul Chryst, will receive $11 million not to perform his old job.
The best gig in college football might just be getting fired
This one’s the best: Nebraska could have allowed Scott Frost, who once quarterbacked the Cornhuskers to a national championship, to coach through last Saturday’s game against Indiana. Firing him after Oct. 1 would have meant the school was on the hook for a $7.5 million buyout. Instead, Nebraska decided, after a loss to Georgia Southern on Sept. 10, it couldn’t watch Frost for even two more games. So the school will pay him $15 million not to coach — or twice as much as if it had waited a few weeks.
When an NFL owner makes a mistake on a coach or an executive and has to move on before a contract is up, they’re eating the money. When a college athletic department or athletic director does the same, they can turn, hat in hand, to all manner of places — wealthy boosters who would rather pay $1 million than watch another loss to State or Tech, maybe the fundraising arm of the athletic department. There’s enough cash to pay one person to coach and one person not to. Just don’t suggest paying the players. (We will get to that.)
The season is five weeks old, and already coaches at five Power Five conference schools have been fired — Chryst at Wisconsin, Edwards at Arizona State, Frost at Nebraska, Geoff Collins at Georgia Tech and Karl Dorrell at Colorado. Total tab they will be paid, again, not to coach: more than $55 million, according to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
Pointing out that the finances surrounding college athletics have gone off the rails is akin to revealing that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen make water. It’s so obvious it’s almost not worth repeating. That schools are willing to break with decades of traditions and alliances and rivalries to realign with other combinations that will pay them more isn’t so much heartbreaking as it is pragmatic, the realities of a landscape guided not by educational institutions but by television networks.
But the fall of 2022, before even the second weekend in October, college football finances have reached their jump-the-shark moment. It’s not that Kirby Smart is making $10.25 million to coach his national champion Georgia Bulldogs or that Lincoln Riley is raking in more than $10 million annually to resurrect Southern California. At least they’re coaching and not on the couch.
There’s a truth about college sports that make them more prone to gluttonous habits than even their pro brethren. If the New York Jets fire coach Adam Gase with two seasons left on his deal — as they did in early 2021 — owner Woody Johnson has to eat the money. His money. The NFL is cutthroat, but at some level, with swift triggers on coaches, it’s the owners cutting their own throats. It could make even billionaires pause.
If Nebraska fans can’t bear the notion of Frost coaching against Oklahoma and Indiana, Athletic Director Trev Alberts can pull the trigger, and if it costs the school an extra $7.5 million … well, in pre-pandemic times the Cornhuskers athletic department raked in $97.5 million in revenue, according to the Lincoln Journal-Star. And that’s before the seven-year, $7 billion media rights deal between the Big Ten and Fox was forged. What’s $7.5 million among friends?
It all leads to some comical unemployment line jokes. On Nov. 27, 2021, Ed Orgeron coached his last game at LSU, which let him go. In December 2021, LSU paid Orgeron $5.68 million. In January 2022, the school paid him $667,000. In June of this year, it paid him $750,000. In December, the check will be for $1 million.
“We had a meeting,” Orgeron said during a speaking engagement last month, describing his discussions with LSU Athletic Director Scott Woodward that led to his dismissal.
According to Orgeron, Woodward said, “Coach, you got $17.1 million on your contract. We’re going to give it to you.”
Orgeron laughed at the retelling. His response? “What time do you want me to leave, and what door do you want me out of, brother?”
The last of 18 payments will be $426,000 in December 2025 — ensuring there will be plenty of gumbo for another nice Christmas at the Orgeron house.
What a world. Coaches, of course, worry these days about the impact name, image and likeness rules could have on their ability to recruit and retain talented players. But the rise of NIL payments to marketable athletes doesn’t mean the gigantic vats of money schools rake in from ticket and merchandise sales and conference television contracts are lessened. NIL isn’t drawing funds from that bucket. It’s a new bucket altogether.
And the spigot just keeps pouring into the old buckets, with no single person responsible for footing the bill. So if Chryst — who posted a .738 winning percentage and won six of seven bowl games in his first seven years at his alma mater — starts 2-3 and gets blown out at home by Illinois, well, then, the Badgers have the money to make him go away — from the University of Wisconsin Foundation, the school’s chief fundraising and investment arm. If Edwards loses to Eastern Michigan and the program is losing momentum, the Sun Devils can pay him to leave while paying someone else to come. Not a penny of it comes out of the pocket of Anderson, who can rely on others to financially cover his (repeated) mistakes.
Impatience is at an all-time high. Had Colorado waited until Jan. 1 to fire Dorrell, it would have cost the school a buyout of $7.8 million. Because it did so after an 0-5 start, the school will pay $11.4 million. Two decades ago, smart athletic directors began getting ahead of the hiring curve — and of signing days — by firing coaches with a game or two left in the season. Florida did this with Ron Zook in 2004 because it gave the Gators a chance to get ahead in the race for Utah Coach Urban Meyer, who was going to be coveted.
Now a couple of games left appear to be maybe five games too late. So we’re past the era in which the easy gripe was, “Goodness gracious, these guys get paid a lot of money to coach football” — and arrived at a time when they’re getting paid a couple generations of life’s savings not to coach it.
Source: WP
