The complex business of firing coaches: Why sticker-shock buyout numbers don't tell the whole story

There is perhaps no more important financial line item in a coach's contract than the buyout. Often, the liquidated damages section can set the terms of how easy a separation can be or how long a coach's specter can remain on the school's balance sheet. There are sticker-shock buyouts every year in college football: Jimbo Fisher's $76.8 million fully guaranteed number from Texas A&M will go down in infamy. It made Gus Malzahn's $21.4 million number from Auburn (eye-watering at the time) seem quaint.

Former LSU head coach Ed Orgeron famously quipped that during his buyout discussion with LSU,

"They said, 'Coach, you've got $17.1 million on your contract," Orgeron said. "We're gonna give it to you.' I said, 'What time do you want me to leave and what door do you want me out of, brother?'"

But that's the SEC, where salaries have ballooned to the point that multiple coaches make into the eight figures. At the lower-paid levels of the sport, the story is much different. Sam Houston fired Phil Longo in late October. The Bearkats are one of the newest FBS programs and a job of little desirability among industry sources because of the resources it lacks. Longo's 2025 salary was $725,000 ($700,000 plus $25,000 in supplemental income). It's a salary akin to that of some SEC position coaches.

Longo initially signed a five-year contract, according to a copy obtained by CBS Sports. His deal includes a maximum of $950,000 if he hits all incentives in the deal, both on-field and academic. He's owed what remains of his 2026 salary, plus his base salary for 2027 and 2028 (roughly $1.53 million in total) and $50,000 in supplemental income. The amount is to be paid monthly through the remainder of the deal.

His buyout pales in comparison to Mike Norvell's much-publicized approximately $50 million number, but CBS Sports goes inside what goes into a small-school buyout and how schools make the calculus in the lower rungs of the Group of Six.

Overall, consider the mitigation clause

The buyout can turn heads in any coach's contract, but the really important number is in the fine print, namely the mitigation clause.

Longo's reads as follows:

"The Coach agrees that if he receives compensation from another coaching position during the time he is receiving buyout payments from the University under Section 3.03.a., the University may reduce the amount of the buy-out payments on a dollar-for-dollar basis by the amount that the Coach receives as compensation from his new employer in such coaching position. During the time he receives buyout payments from the University, the Coach will promptly report any coaching employment to the University's Director of Athletics, including the name of the Coach's employer and the amount of compensation that the Coach receives. Absent mutual written agreement of the parties, the University shall not reassign Coach to any other position in lieu of a without cause termination pursuant to Section 3.03 of this contract."

In plain English: For every dollar paid to him in his next coaching job through the end of his contract, Sam Houston saves a dollar. If he gets another coordinator gig at the Power Four level, there's a high chance that salary is higher than what's owed to him by Sam Houston, and the school won't owe him any money at all due to the offset.

This is why the buyout number in the contract is not, in the end, often the actual number a school pays out, whether it's James Franklin's $49 million number or Longo's much more modest amount. Coaches are hard-wired to do one thing: coach. And schools know that they are often itching to get back into the workforce. Offset clauses are essentially boilerplate in deals these days, lest you have a Texas A&M situation.

Human nature might be to just kick one's feet up at the beach and never work again, but beyond the nature of coaches, many contracts include clauses that require coaches to seek other jobs in good faith (called duty-to-mitigate clauses).

It's a key reason why you might see reporting that a coach on the shelf is interviewing for a job. Even if he doesn't get it, it's good enough to satisfy that he's at least seeking work. Overly litigious schools might force the issue if they get the sense that a coach is not even looking for a gig.

Longo's contract has no such duty to mitigate.

If you're thinking that the offset seems easy to get around, think again

One industry source said to consider the school as the bank.

"You need to be nice to the bank so you can withdraw money out right over the course of your contract," the source said. "Schools have gotten really sharp lately by introducing language that doesn't allow you to game the offset."

They used an example: Let's say a coach has one year of buyout money owed to him from his old school. What their fine-print language may disallow is for his new school to pay him $500,000 in Year 1 and $1.5 million in Year 2 to average out at $1 million per year, but in a way that the new school saves cash on his salary by essentially defraying the cost to the old school. The coach's actual cash will be the same $1.5 million, but how he gets it is the key.

"[Group of Six schools] are gonna nickel and dime you on everything, and they're gonna want to get the contracts from the new place and cross their Ts and dot their Is," Another industry source said. "We've never really ran into the issue of like, oh, like you're not making enough. We're not going to pay you until you adjust your contract. But that is language in most of these offset/mitigation contracts themselves."

If a coach has a good relationship with administrators at his previous school, they might be able to get away with just communicating what his new compensation is, doing the mitigation math and both parties moving on. But schools at all levels can lean on coaches. At its nastiest, one agent told CBS Sports a school requested one of his client's tax returns to verify income.

The dynamics that go into firing a coach

It goes far beyond wins and losses. The same factors are present at all levels of school: the political capital of the athletic director and questions about the overall budget. Some are gun-shy about firing their coach and pumping more money into the roster instead. Wyoming head coach Jay Sawvel, for instance, donated $125,000 to the Cowboys' NIL and roster budget, in a move that mirrored Norvell committing $4.5 million of his salary to the Noles' roster in 2024. The new vote of confidence in college athletics is putting more money into a roster, hoping it buys a year.

Revenue generation is top of mind in college athletics. Akron held a draw of season ticket holders to script the opening offensive drive of its 2026 home opener. Extra chances in the raffle were given to season ticket holders who referred new season ticket holders. 

According to Front Office Sports, the school sold out of its suite inventory for the first time in school history and beat ticket sales goals before the season even started. The median Group of Six athletic department budget is around $44 million, according to data sourced from the Extra Points Library. Sam Houston's athletic department expenses in fiscal year 2025 were $42 million.

In major college football, ticket money is almost an afterthought. Fans often don't remember that butts in seats create real money, and when the television money isn't there in the tens of millions from network partners as it is in the Power Four, ticket revenue really comes into play. 

Now consider if your coach is struggling. $1.5 million to fire your coach might be a pretty penny even if you're confident you can enforce offset language. According to KC Smurthwaite, an athletic administration consultant, one of the first things he does when a school contacts him is look at ticket data to help determine if it's the right thing to do.

"There's some group of six schools that expect to get $300,000 to $500,000 at least in single game ticket purchases every week," Smurthwaite told CBS Sports. " Now, there's a lot of factors that go into opponent game time, weather. But I'm going to shoot on the low end here and say let's go 150-225,000 for a group of six individual single-game ticket buyers. 

"You have fan apathy. The fan base hates the coach. They hate what's going on with the program. They're not showing up. And all of a sudden you have three or four even home games still to go, you're all of a sudden looking at $500,000- $600,000 that you could have historically gotten, or even half that if you just had half those individuals show up.

There's data showing we know season-ticket purchasers are going to walk through that door, and they're going to spend an average of $21 on concessions, parking, X, Y, and Z. We can go back and scan. All of a sudden, Billy and Sally are not coming to the last two home games. We kind of start to poke around, do a little qualitative analysis. Oh, they're just upset at the program."

If, for instance, a buyout is $1.5 million but week over week I'm losing $100,000 for half-empty home games, with no telling how much more it may cost if I retain that coach for next season, maybe an athletic director bites the bullet, fires the coach, hopes the mitigation helps in the long run and tries to claw back some of the lost ticket revenue.

"Can we actually just make that money back with the opportunity cost to hey, we're actually losing more money by being patient, and we're going to make a change," Smurthwaite said.

The coaching carousel may always spin in college sports, but it's an expensive ride to get on whether you're at Texas A&M in College Station or 50 miles away in Huntsville. The cost is all relative.