The buyouts in college football coaching contracts make hiring a gamble
It’s the halfway point of college football season and two head coaches of Power Five teams have already been fired, but one school will still have to pay their former head coach due to the buyout clause in his contract.
The first head coach to go in the midst of the 2015 season was Randy Edsall, who was fired from the University of Maryland after the Terrapins dropped to 2–4 after losing to Ohio State on Oct. 10. With a record of 22–34 during his four years Maryland’s head coach, it never seemed that Edsall had the program trending towards the success that the university’s athletic program invested in.
But the University will still be signing Edsall’s paychecks to the tune of $4.7 million over the next two years, according to Forbes. And this isn’t the first time Maryland had to pay millions to buyout a head football coach. Edsall’s predecessor Ralph Freidgen was paid $2 million when he was fired in 2011, as mentioned in the same Forbes article. That’s a $6.7 million investment in paying an employee that no longer works for the University.
And while $6.7 million seems like a lot of money, some Universities have dished out a lot more to their football coaches. Former Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis was paid nearly the same amount to not coach the Fighting Irish, according to ESPN. Well actually, that’s just the initial payment Weiss received. Since Weis was let go in 2009, Notre Dame has paid him an estimated $14.8 million, and the University still owes him more than $2 million over the next two years. ESPN estimates that Notre Dame will ultimately end up paying Weiss $18.9 million not to coach its football team.
Weis would then spend a year as the offensive coordinator at the University of Florida for a season before the University of Kansas hired him. He would win only six games before he was fired during his third season as the Jayhawks’ head coach, but now he gets paychecks from two different former employers. ESPN reports that Kansas is paying Weiss $5.625 million to not coach the Jayhawks.
In the same ESPN report, Mark Schlabach wrote that Auburn, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Tennessee and Texas are paying a combined amount of $51.35 million to their former head coaches to buy out their contracts.
With several Universities spending millions of dollars just to get zero return on their investments, it seems like it’s time for reform.
Colleges, big and small, are flushing their money down the toilet. They’re wasting money that can be spent funding academic programs and other athletic teams. In order to prevent this from happening, the NCAA needs to step in and put a limit how much money a University can promise a coach if they are fired.
Without a cap on buyouts, hiring a new head coach is not an investment — it’s a gamble.
