SEC
Every SEC coach's current buyout figure if they were fired this year
The SEC is known for handing out big coaching contracts, complete with large buyouts.
The COVID-19 pandemic might make certain schools hesitant to pay hefty buyouts to get rid of coaches this offseason, but we’ll take a look at the buyout figures anyway.
On Wednesday, USA TODAY’s updated coaches salary database came out, and that included 10 buyout figures for SEC coaches (if they were fired after Dec. 1). Here’s how they stack up against one another:
- Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M: $53,125,000
- Nick Saban, Alabama: $36,800,000
- Ed Orgeron, LSU: $23,850,000
- Mark Stoops, Kentucky: $23,750,000
- Gus Malzahn, Auburn: $21,450,000
- Kirby Smart, Georgia: $19,835,834
- Will Muschamp, South Carolina: $15,378,750
- Eliah Drinkwitz, Mizzou: $14,350,000
- Jeremy Pruitt, Tennessee: $12,880,000
- Dan Mullen, Florida: $12,000,000
Mississippi State’s Mike Leach, Ole Miss’s Lane Kiffin, Vanderbilt’s Derek Mason and Arkansas’s Sam Pittman did not have buyout figures listed.
That Gus number is big. I know some AU fans that would gladly chip in though.
Screw that. I’ve heard there is one particular big money booster on the BOT that pushed for the contract and guaranteed the buyout if it didn’t work. He’s the only one that should have to shell out a penny.
I think Steven Leath should have to pay it lol. also I’m in the fire gus boat after the 2021 season. It falls to about $17 mil then. It will be Nix’s 3rd year as a starter, just about everyone coming back on O except Williams and then the D should have 7-8 back. If he can’t win 10 games with bama and uga at home then he’s gotta be gone.
Of course Bama and Georgia won’t have any starters back and the Dawgs whip you just as much on the road as at home but please keep him at least one more year.
Unless he goes 2/3-8/7 this year he’ll be back. Pandemic probably helps him as well but next year is the year IMO.
I don’t think any SEC coach gets fired this season. Not even Muschamp. I doubt Vandy wins a game this year, but I don’t think the higher ups really care.
There is no money to buy out Derek Mason. The entire department is being scuttled just so they can continue to pay the bills. The University as a whole has enough money to buy the other 13 schools, but that money is earmarked for what matters–Medical research, the best hospital facilities in the US, and a student body that compares with the student body at Cal Tech, MIT, and the University of Chicago.
The new chancellor came from the U. of Chicago. Maybe, he will take the VU program in that direction and move VU to D3, just like the Maroons, when they left the league that was renamed the Big Ten when Michigan State joined.
The area involving the current football stadium has been planned as a community college for quite some time. Vanderbilt bought all the tracts of land around that part of the campus. The stadium had been planned for demolition with the football team moving to the tiny 30,000 seat planned soccer stadium at the State Fairgrounds, in a terrible part of town, that very few of the remaining fans would ever consider parking a car in that neighborhood, where businesses openly holster guns during daylight hours.
If not for the outcry of a few influential fans, Vanderbilt Stadium would be scheduled for the wrecking ball. If Vanderbilt were to go D3, both the football stadium and basketball gym could be demolished and re-used for academic and research purposes, and the D3 teams could easily rent a local Middle School’s football field and basketball gym less than a mile away from the edge of the campus, or my high school alma mater’s artificial turf football field and state of the art gym about 2 miles from the campus.
When an SEC football team draws fewer than 500 people to a home game, where at least 1/3 of the people there came from the other team, and the remaining tickets were free giveaways, and at the same time, an 0-9 Sewanee team drew 1,500 for their final home game, it’s time to give up the ghost and join the former SEC rival in the Southern Athletic Association.
The football program makes money for the school because they spend the bare minimum of SEC money on athletics.
Not even Muschamp…but you’re probably right…not too many mega-donors for the Cocks program. What a pity to keep any head coach because you cannot afford to fire him. True the Vandy administration
could care less. They just keep on cashing that SEC annual check.
Wow!!! We’re like #4 in the league. Oh wait, this probably isn’t one of those where you want to be near the top.
It’s not bad if your coach has earned the contract… Which Stoops absolutely has.
He’s done well enough to deserve that big of a buyout. His number looks really good compared to Jimbo Fisher’s. Good lord.
Astronomical and absolutely ridiculous buyouts. I’ve never been a fan of fully-guaranteed contracts.
Stoops has the best deal in college football. His base salary increases annually and all he does is has to win 7 games and his contract is automatically extended another year, just 7 games that’s it. After beating Louisville last year Boom! his contract automatically extended through 2026 and is guaranteed 75% of his contract if fired. With at least 3 or 4 gimme games per season (in a normal year) that is a job you should never leave.
I’m sure he would leave if he got paid enough and the new school was a higher profile program. The main question is which schools could afford to pay him and accept his brand of football where most currently elite programs have big offenses?
Well if he were to win the SEC and a true blue-blood came calling sure. But in terms of job security he’ll never have a better deal than what he as now. It might have played a part already in him not pursuing the FSU job when his name was being thrown out there.
Just a heads up, I don’t think any schools will be firing coaches this year. They simply can’t afford to with the revenue losses they are all seeing.
Is Butch still getting paid by Tennessee?
yes
I think his last UT paycheck is in December
The total insanity of the athletic directors even agreeing to such buyouts for some of these coaches is incomprehensible. 1st year coach Drinkwitz at $14 Million & Muschamp at $15 Million, Gus at $21 Million ? It is easy to spend someone else’s Money obviously. These AD’s need a professional negotiator representing the University…the coaches have one, he’s call an Agent…usually Jimmy Sexton arriving in his private-jet.