The cushiest job in the world isn’t actually a job at all – it’s that of a fired college football coach.
College athletics are a rigorous and cutthroat environment. What better way to relax after that than taking a luxurious sabbatical with millions of dollars in severance pay?
Just ask former Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher, who was paid a record sum of $76 million to leave College Station. He’s spent the last year in the mountains back in his home state of West Virginia, hunting and watching football as a fan. There’s a lot of speculation about what Fisher’s next job will be, but what’s the rush? He’s living the sweet life right now.
Buyout discourse came back in the headlines Thursday afternoon when Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin announced that embattled head coach Billy Napier would be returning for the 2025 season.
Napier entered this year on arguably the hottest seat in the country, and calls for his head grew to an uproar after the Gators were blown out at home by Miami in the season opener. Florida has certainly improved since then, picking off the SEC’s low-hanging fruit with wins over Mississippi State and Kentucky and staying close in losses to Tennessee and Georgia.
Still, the Gators are just 4-4. They still have lowly Florida State left on the schedule, but they’ll have to pull an upset over one of Texas, LSU or Ole Miss to even reach a bowl game. After going 5-7 last season, many Florida fans were left outraged at the decision to keep Napier. You know it’s bad when rival fans are overjoyed.
It’s a situation that mirrors Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek’s public backing of head coach Sam Pittman last November amidst loads of speculation about his job status. Yurachek threw his endorsement behind the Head Hog after a win over FIU, only for the Hogs to get trounced at home by Missouri the week after, ending the season on a sour note.
Florida still has four games still left to go against an in-state rival and three SEC heavyweights, Stricklin’s decision could age very poorly in the next month. So what’s the reasoning for backing a coach that has a 15-18 record at one of the sport’s premier programs?
Baylor is also thought to be retaining its struggling head coach, Dave Aranda, despite never-ending hot seat rumors over the last couple seasons.
Just like everything in college sports these days, these situations came down to money.
Dolla Dolla Bills, Y’all
Buying out Napier’s contract would have cost the university more than $26 million, according to ESPN, and that figure rises to around $40 million when you factor in assistant coaches’ contracts and the buyout it would take to poach a hypothetical new coach from his current school.
Stricklin’s calculus told him that wasn’t a wise decision to make, especially with the team on what he believes to be a positive trajectory. The Gators have a very young roster, and around 70% of the team’s NIL funding is invested in freshmen and sophomores, according to ESPN.
Five-star freshman quarterback DJ Lagway has been a bright spot for the team and freshman running back Jadan Baugh – a former Arkansas commit – splits carries 50/50 with senior Montrell Johnson Jr. and has 323 rushing yards so far. The thinking is that firing Napier would risk losing Lagway, who’s viewed as the program’s future. Add that to the $40 million coaches’ ransom and retaining Napier looks a lot more reasonable.
The fiasco over in Gainesville serves as vindication for the way Yurachek has handled Pittman’s contract.
Florida Buyout Dilemma Makes Hunter Yurachek Look Smarter
Sick of exorbitant buyouts in the aftermath of Chad Morris’ firing in 2019, Yurachek structured a contract with Sam Pittman that contained a novel idea – pegging the actual amount of the buy-out to how much winning he had done. If Pittman has a .500 or better record when he’s let go, the university owes him 75% of the money left on his contract. For a below-.500 record, that figure drops down to 50%.
Seems pretty reasonable. At the negotiation table, Yurachek was desperate to avoid perpetuating the tangled financial mess Arkansas was sitting in. At the time, Arkansas was simultaneously paying the buyouts for both Morris and Bret Bielema – which initially had the UA on the hook for about $22 million combined. The last thing the Arkansas AD wanted to do was add another hefty severance package on top of that.
(It should be noted, though, that Bielema’s buyout was negotiated down after litigation and some of Morris’ buyout was offset thanks to Gus Malzahn hiring him as an offensive coordinator.)
That clause excludes the 2020 season, when an all-SEC slate meant the Hogs’ 3-7 record was a success. Since 2021, Pittman’s record stands at 25-22. With only three games left on the schedule, that means the Head Hog is safely in the 75% bracket no matter what happens. If worst comes to worst and Arkansas wants to move on this offseason, Pittman would be owed $12.1 million.
That’s mostly because of Arkansas’ surprising 9-4 season in 2021. Even if the last two years haven’t gone quite as planned, Pittman quite literally bought himself some time by overachieving early in his tenure.
If he had done worse up to this point, he would have been a lot more “fireable” both last season and if this season had gone off the rails. For instance, a losing overall record would drop his hypothetical severance package this offseason from $12.1 million to around $8 million.
But his overall deliverance of the goods is one reason he was retained, along with the pending revenue sharing situation that will appease some of Arkansas’ NIL woes. Arkansas’ athletic department, like other SEC schools, will be on the hook for a payout of approximately $20-$25 million to student-athletes next year.
Hunter Yurachek Deserves Some Credit for Negotiation Skills
The pessimistic take on this topic is to criticize Yurachek for even including a buyout in the contract at all – and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong to take that stance. Pittman famously said he didn’t even look at the salary amount on the contract back in 2019, so pleased was he with the offer at all. Since then, he’s repeatedly expressed his desire for this to be his last job, given his love for the state and age (62).
While buyouts certainly provide some security and guarantees of time to coaches, they’re mostly a mechanism to prevent other schools from coming in and poaching your coach. Pittman might be just right for Arkansas, but other schools aren’t exactly lining up to come try and take him – which makes the buyout seem sort of pointless.
But, in all charitability to Yurachek, Arkansas is still in a better leverage spot than most other schools. In addition to Florida, USC is also being held hostage by its head coach, Lincoln Riley. The Trojans currently hold a woeful 4-5 record in their first season in the Big Ten, and that’s after underachieving and losing five games with Heisman winner Caleb Williams last season.
Riley’s buyout? A whopping $88 million. Texas A&M boosters were called crazy for canning Jimbo, and this one’s even worse. Forking out close to nine figures on a buyout would leave the school’s boosters with bank accounts looking dryer than Riley’s infamous brisket:
Now the USC brass basically has to pray that Riley takes another job at some point, and the program will likely lay dormant until then. Compared to that hapless situation in Los Angeles, Yurachek has much more control over his program. Rubbing additional salt in that wound is the fact USC had to pay Yurachek $1 million to buy out Eric Musselman’s contract in April.
While many Razorback fans at this point may wish Pittman’s buyout was smaller – which would make him an easier chop – in the big picture this is what Yurachek wanted all along. A more rational response to the accelerating arms race in coaches’ salaries. Sure enough, Pittman’s buyout right now is less than half that of Napier’s.
Arkansas Got Out of Mess by Staying Off of Gus Bus
Texas A&M isn’t the only school that’s been involved in buyout drama these last few years. It wasn’t too long ago that Auburn broke the bank and paid $21.5 million to fire Gus Malzahn. Believe it or not, that was seen as an exorbitant amount at the time before the Aggies destroyed that Overton window.
At the end of last season, a wild rumor went around suggesting that a group of Arkansas boosters were circling the wagons for a master plan to fire Pittman and replace him with Malzahn. That would have launched Arkansas (and its checkbook) back into the same vicious cycle of hiring and firing that Yurachek is attempting to avoid.
The Hogs have tangoed with their supposed native son from Northwest Arkansas before, with Gus heavily rumored for the job back in 2017 before deciding to stay at Auburn. Ironically, the leverage he gained from that extension was what got him that handsome buyout when he was fired a few years later.
Now at UCF in the Big 12 and forced to rely on former Razorback KJ Jefferson of all people, the dream of Malzahn to Arkansas is likely buried once and for all – until the next time the job is open.
The days of obscene buyouts – which ultimately sent Malzahn out of the SEC and gave Jimbo the license to traipse around the woods thinkin’ deep thoughts while helping deliver Bobby Petrino back to Arkansas – appear to be over.
Florida’s retention of Napier makes Pittman sticking around for yet another year all the more likely – assuming he takes care of business against Louisiana Tech in two weeks to get the Hogs bowl eligible.
While some fans may consider this kind of loyalty to a middle-tier coach maddening, in the end it’s the result of what Yurachek wanted way back in 2019: the end of treating boosters and athletic departments like they are made of Monopoly money and the ushering in of a more clear-minded era in college sports.
It remains to be seen whether this strategy of fiscal responsibility will “pay off” for the athletic department. Nothing hurts the pocket books more than empty seats, and there were plenty of those in Reynolds Razorback Stadium after Ole Miss torched the Hogs for 63 points last game.
Yurachek is getting what he wanted in terms of more AD austerity, but Arkansas fans have not gotten anything close to what they’ve wanted with back-to-back embarrassing losses at home. The Hogs really need to deliver more respectable performances down the closing stretch to justify Yurachek’s calculus for retaining Pittman.
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Napier Love Makes More Sense Given…
On Friday, a report came out that makes Scott Stricklin’s decision make even more sense.
Florida basketball coach Todd Golden has been accused of sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, stalking and cyberstalking multiple women, including students.
This all happened over the course of 12 months, according to a copy of a Sept. 27 Title IX complaint that reporters for the Florida student newspaper said they had obtained.
It’s enough to bring to mind a certain more Razorback football coach.
More here:
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Chuck and Bo discuss a “firing freeze” in the SEC starting at 1:28:50 here:
John Nabors talks Sam Pittman’s job security and Arkansas football’s future:
Aaron Torres gives his take on whether Pittman’s seat should be hot or not:
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More coverage of Arkansas football from BoAS:
