No need to fret about all those fired college football coaches. They’ll be OK

A head coaching job in college football is a good gig if you can get it. It’s an even better gig if you can manage to get fired.

Let’s face it, the work-life balance is much improved. You continue to draw a hefty salary without the hassle of having to, you know, work. No recruiting. No managing NIL deals. No coaxing 18-year-olds to play for your team and, a year later, not to jump into the transfer portal. No more shopping the portal. No more Saturdays on the sideline when your future depends largely on the decision-making of teenagers.

Getting fired is not a bad way to go. It’s just you and the golf course every day. You continue to be paid — just for breathing. It’s a paid vacation — for life. Most coaches have lucrative, long-term guaranteed contracts. If they’re fired before the end of the contract, they must be paid the balance of the contract, either in installments or a lump sum — unless it is for cause (read: Sherrone Moore).

Just this year alone, 15 head football coaches have been fired whose buyouts total nearly $236 million. This doesn’t even include fired coaches who likely will be owed buyouts but the amount has not been settled (former Stanford coach Troy Taylor, for one).

These coaches will be paid for not working. In fact, some contracts stipulate that if a fired coach lands another coaching job, he will be paid only the difference between his old contract and the new one. Other contracts require a university to pay the full amount regardless of whether a coach takes another coaching job.

Here’s the list of coaches who have been fired this year and the amount they are owed by their former employers:

• $54 million, Brian Kelly (LSU)
• $49 million, James Franklin (Penn State)
• $33 million, Jonathan Smith (Michigan State)
• $21 million, Billy Napier (Florida)
• $15.8 million, Hugh Freeze (Auburn)
• $15 million, Mike Gundy (Oklahoma State)
• $10.9 million, Justin Wilcox (Cal)
• $9.8 million, Sam Pittman (Arkansas)
• $6.75 million, Mark Stoops (Kentucky)
• $6 million, Brent Pry (Virginia)
• $5 million, DeShaun Foster (UCLA)
• $4 million, Trent Bray (Oregon State)
• $2.4 million, Trent Dilfer (UAB)
• $1.7 million, Tim Beck (Coastal Carolina)
• $1.5 million, Jay Norvell (Colorado State)

TOTAL: $235.85 million

For the record, Kelly’s $54 million buyout is not a record. It is merely the second-biggest buyout ever, behind Jimbo Fisher’s $76 million buyout, which began when he was fired by Texas A&M in 2023. Franklin’s $49 million buyout is the third biggest, but he eventually accepted the head coaching job at Virginia Tech, reducing the actual payout to about $9 million.

Thanks to buyouts, LSU is paying three head football coaches — Kiffin’s $91 million, former coach Brian Kelly’s $54 million buyout, and the final $426,000 of former coach Ed Orgeron’s $17.1 million buyout. That’s a total of $162.1 million.

Is there anyone out there who still believes college football isn’t first and foremost a big business?

The universities — which are really just football corporations with a side interest in education, rather than the other way around — have deep reservoirs of money at their disposal; apparently, they also are poor judges of head coaching talent.

Scott Woodward, the LSU athletic director until recently, hired Kelly as the head football coach in December 2021, giving him a 10-year, $100 million deal. Five years later, he fired Kelly, leaving LSU on the hook for $54 million in dead money.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry was so dismayed by this wasteful and expensive turn of events that he publicly stated Woodward would not be the one who would hire the next coach (which turned out to be Ole Miss’s Lane Kiffin, for seven years and $91 million). This led to outrage over LSU’s hiring practices and days later, Woodward was fired.

Before coming to LSU, Woodward was athletic director at Texas A&M. In 2017, he fired head coach Kevin Sumlin and hired Jimbo Fisher, offering him a 10-year, $75 million contract to lure him away from Florida State.

Woodward and the school’s board of regents doubled down on it in 2021 by awarding Fisher a contract extension through the 2031 season, bumping his pay to $9 million per year. In 2023, Woodward fired Fisher. That left Texas A&M saddled with Fisher’s $76 million buyout and Sumlin’s $10 million buyout.

By the way, when Woodward was fired by LSU, he walked away with a $6 million buyout.