Phil Goldstein | NorthFortyNews.com
Until I retired, I worked for 30 years in intercollegiate athletics administration. I supervised business and budget operations at four different major college programs. My late father, from whom I learned all I know about prudent fiscal management, warned me upon entering the profession that I’d find much distaste for what he saw as the unbusinesslike business of big-time college athletics.
And so, I again bite the hand that fed me with this, my fifth annual NFN column validating Dad’s observation via the latest costly mistakes in head football coaching hires. This year’s staggering total is $289 million. That’s what the purportedly intelligent directors of athletics of higher education’s (?!) 136 top football programs have coughed up in contract buyouts to send coaching blunders packing. And if that sum’s not astounding enough, consider that it’s $38 million higher than the previous three football seasons combined ($71 million, 2022; $130 million, 2023; $50 million, 2024).
And by the way, most, if not all, of a head coach’s staff is usually fired with him, and many of them have their own contracts. The totals above don’t include those additional and considerable buyout costs.
Led by the $54 million in contract buyout owed to Louisiana State’s Brian Kelly, here are the rounded sums reported as the remaining insults to employment intelligence:
Brent Pry, Virginia Tech, $6 million; DeShaun Foster, UCLA, $6 million; Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State, $15 million; Sam Pittman, Arkansas, $10 million; Trent Bray, Oregon State, $4 million; Troy Taylor, Stanford, $20 million; James Franklin, Penn State, $49 million; Trent Dilfer, Alabama-Birmingham, $3 million; Billy Napier, Florida, $21 million; Jay Norvell, Colorado State, $2 million; Hugh Freeze, Auburn, $15 million; Justin Wilcox, California, $11 million; Jonathan Smith, Michigan State, $33 million; Tim Beck, Coastal Carolina, $2 million; and Mark Stoops, Kentucky, $38 million.
Many of the announcements of coaching firings included the supposed-to-appease caveat that donors, not the institutions’ operating budgets, contributed to the buyouts. But when I think of the value to true philanthropic causes that the $540 million paid out for mistakes in just the last four years could bring, that just reinforces why the profession’s value system wore out its welcome with me.
Despite never having worked in intercollegiate athletics, my father’s advice included the supposition that those who did would no doubt conveniently call it only a game if you reminded them that it was a business, or a business when you suggested that it was only a game.
For me, at the time I left the profession, it had ceased being a game, and it surely wasn’t good business.
Until next year’s column on this subject, keep those higher education donations coming.
Phil Goldstein is in his fifth year writing Tales from Timnath for North Forty News. Phil is a 15-year Timnath resident who is finally using his West Virginia University journalism degree after getting sidetracked 52 years ago. The views expressed herein are Phil’s only. Contact him with comments on the column at [email protected].
