It is amazing — and disturbing — how much people are willing to spend in the pursuit of a championship-caliber college football team.
Not only will they fork out millions of dollars for the next coach and staff, they’re willing to pay almost as much to get rid of the ones who couldn’t win enough games.
The Clarion Ledger recently reported that the firing of Ole Miss football coach Matt Luke could cost up to $17 million. An estimated $10 million will go to Luke himself, who had three years left on his contract. The rest would be due his top assistant coaches if new coach Lane Kiffin doesn’t retain them, although that $7 million could be reduced significantly if the assistants land jobs elsewhere.
Luke — an in-house hire who got promoted after a one-season trial run — was a relative bargain as coaching salaries go in the Southeastern Conference. Kiffin is more expensive, and it’s likely his assistants will be, too.
If a coach in Mississippi is a smart businessman, he will insist on a four-year contract, the state maximum, with a one-year extension every season he survives without being fired. That way, the worst he can do, if he’s ultimately canned, is a three-year, multi-million-dollar parachute like the one that softened Luke’s brief unemployment. He’s now the offensive line coach at Georgia.
Odds are a taxpayer-funded university won’t have to shoulder much of the cost of getting rid of the old and bringing in the new. That will come from well-heeled boosters. It’s a shame, though, they can’t figure out causes more beneficial to mankind to which to give this money.
