“Let’s be honest: money in college football does not feel real anymore.” Matt Brown of the Extra Points newsletter and formerly of CBS Sports was the first to say this, noting how the amount of money paid to coaches being bought out (fired, or paid to not coach) has almost exceeded $200 million … Let that sink in.
To not coach and not be the face of a school anymore, these coaches are projected to be paid in their buyout money $200 million combined. This is a wild era of college football we live in. While Jimbo Fisher’s firing in 2023 cost a reported $77 million and remains as the highest buyout in college football history, two coaches' buyouts have rivaled that in this cycle alone.
How and why is this happening? Well, the problem that is (mostly) causing these premature firings for coaches is unrealistic expectations. While the new playoff was supposed to and has leveled the playing field, the result is now that athletic directors, administrations, and fans demand the results to be quick. That anything less than making the playoffs is an automatic failure, meaning the coach should immediately be out of the job.
This philosophy, therefore, has made its rounds around the sport, with coaches like Brian Kelly (former LSU coach) and James Franklin (former Penn State coach) being the most extreme examples of this. They both were fired in the middle of this season, with buyouts in the $50 million range, after coming into the season ranked in the top 10 with sky-high expectations.
Kelly was touting how LSU had the best transfer portal roster during the offseason, while Franklin loaded up on wide receivers. People expected Penn State to be like the last two national championship winners, who had both returned lots of juniors for their senior year. Penn State did the same, lost two terrible games to UCLA and Northwestern, and Franklin lost his job.
For these coaches, this job is the result of being at the top of their sport, with everyone having all eyes on them at all times, even more prevalent in the social media age. These men have signed up for this and get paid millions upon millions of dollars to worry about their job security each week they underperform (even when they deny so in press conferences …). And yet the biggest side effect of these in-season firings is the dysfunction is has caused for each team. No teams that have fired their head coach have played better afterward; instead resulting in a season where their primary leader is now out of the building entirely, now being paid by donor money.