As the college football coaching carousel continues to go nuts with LSU, Penn State and Florida now open, along with others like Oklahoma State and Arkansas, one of the many questions around college football has been: When do the salaries, or at least the buyouts, stop getting out of control?
I’m a red-blooded capitalist through and through, but the sport has spent $169 million on buyouts alone this college football season. That’s absurd, and it’s entirely unsustainable for a sports that is always crying poverty. So what is the answer?
Well, it’s going to take one of the big programs to step up, make a great offer, but not be stupid about it. I stumbled upon this idea from ESPN analyst Peter Burns.
Here’s what it would look like based on wins for a coach under this contract.
And if you think $20 million for a 10-2 National Championship is too much, I promise you it’s not. Every big time school would pay that price in a heartbeat, and make a fortune off of that deal. And $4 million for making a bowl game? Entirely reasonable.
I’m not going to hold my breath and assume that LSU, or any other major program, is going to go this route. One thing we keep learning is that the administrators and athletic directors seemingly never learn their lesson, and the coaches and agents laugh all the way to the bank.
Once again, this is not about holding back a salary, in fact, there’s more money to be made, in theory. But for a sport that is considering taking private equity or Saudi money, it’s time for someone with common sense to reel this all in. And it won’t happen at the mid-tier Power 4 programs. It’s going to have to take a blue blood with a backbone to say, “enough”. And then, it will flow downstream from there to the rest of the sport.
Who’s got the stones to do it?!
