‘The money does not exist’: Why the buyouts for college football coaches are setting off alarm bells
- - ‘The money does not exist’: Why the buyouts for college football coaches are setting off alarm bells
Dana O’Neil, CNNOctober 31, 2025 at 9:22 PM
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Brian Kelly, former head coach of the Louisiana State Tigers, is seen during warm-ups before the college football game against the Ole Miss Rebels. Kelly was fired earlier this week. - Randy J. Williams/Getty Images
The placard attached to the podium read “Protecting the most vulnerable,’’ but on this particular Wednesday Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry took aim at a very specific apex predator: Big-time football.
The governor, who was supposed to be talking about food stamps that are nearing a crisis point due to the government shutdown, instead launched a verbal grenade directed squarely at the Louisiana State University Athletics Administration Building – aimed more specifically at the desk of athletic director Scott Woodward.
Calling out not just the lack of success under football head coach Brian Kelly but the $53 million bill LSU now has to foot to give the coach his walking papers, Landry publicly defrocked Woodward, making it clear that the man in charge of LSU athletics would not be making the biggest hire for LSU athletics.
“My role is about the fiscal effect of firing a coach under a terrible contract,’’ Landry said after being asked about his role in Kelly’s dismissal after reports indicated discussions about the dismissal went all the way to the governor’s mansion.
“I care about what the taxpayers are on the hook on, and I was not happy about raising ticket prices while we were having a losing season and we were paying a coach $100 million and not getting results.’’
He wasn’t done there. Landry told ABC on Thursday that he plans to have the state’s attorney general review the next head coach’s contract “to understand what the extent under which the state is ultimately liable.”
The remarks drew plenty of eye rolls. This is Louisiana, where Huey Long used his own gubernatorial position to influence LSU football nearly a 100 years ago. Pigskin and politics regularly mix.
But in this case, Landry’s public tongue lashing resounded well beyond the reaches of the bayou, earning nods of approval in plenty of other far-flung circles of college athletics.
“Finally, someone said it out loud,’’ said a board of trustees member at another institution. “This is so irresponsible.’’
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry talks to reporters outside the Supreme Court in 2022. - Evan Vucci/APBuyout season
LSU, after all, is not alone. Since Oklahoma State fired Mike Gundy on September 23 through Kelly’s dismissal one month later, 10 FBS schools have ousted their head coaches. Combined the coaches are owed $169 million, all coming at a time when college athletics is facing unprecedented costs.
In June, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken approved the $2.8 billion settlement coming from the so-called House settlement, requiring colleges to directly share revenue with their athletes. The estimated House payouts this year is $20.5 million. That will only go up annually.
It has left plenty of university administrators equal parts dismayed and disgusted at what they believe is nothing shy of fiscal malfeasance, with schools hamstrung by deals presented as security blankets for the university but offering only protection for the coaches.
“No one is flying the plane,’’ a board member at one of the schools affected said. “There’s not even a plane. It’s a hot air balloon. Whatever way the wind blows, that’s the way college sports go.’’
Mike Gundy, then-head coach of the Oklahoma State Cowboys, looks on during the second half of the game against the Oregon Ducks. - Robin Alam/ISI Photos/Getty Images
That college football is spending at an unprecedented pace is not new news. Arguing a very expensive need to keep up with the Joneses (or maybe more accurately the Sabans and Meyers) to succeed, coaches long have asked for bigger, better and more.
Facility one-upsmanship, all in the name of attracting better recruits, led to practice facilities with mini-golf courses (Clemson), marble showers in the locker room (Oregon) and sensory deprivation tanks (Georgia). Then came more staff – to run the analytics and sports performance and nutrition and, in some cases, the head coach. Texas has not one, not two but three special assistants to the head coach.
The new expanded concourse in the renovated section of Georgia's Sanford Stadium in 2023. - Joshua L. Jones/USA Today/Imagn
Finally, when simply ballooning coaching contracts was no longer enough, the deals also had to be guaranteed, lest another school poach your leader.
At the start of the season, nine head coaches were making more than $10 million annually, according to the USA Today head coaches database, and 12 had buyouts totaling more than $40 million, topped by Kirby Smart’s $105 million owed should Georgia decide to can him.
Except now, as some of those bills come due at the same time revenue sharing comes into existence, the very real question is no longer an existential crisis. Just where is the money coming from?
“I have no idea,’’ said another board member at an affected school. “The money does not exist.’’
That startling and yet very real revelation flies in the face of what has long been the presiding sentiment about college football: That it is the big money meal ticket for an athletics department.
For years it was not bottom-line accurate —rare was the department that ran in the black – but at least true in theory. Thanks to TV rights packages and tens of thousands of fannies in the seats on fall Saturdays, college football did draw the biggest paycheck.
Except somewhere along the line the spending steamrolled ahead of the profits.
Former Penn State Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin stands on the field during a warmup prior to his final game against Northwestern. - Matthew O'Haren/Imagn Images/Reuters‘No one has the answer’
Consider two of the schools on the hook for two of the biggest coaching buyouts: Penn State, which owes James Franklin $49 million and LSU, on the hook for $53 million for Kelly.
According to the KnightNewhouse College Athletics Database, in the last 10 years Penn State’s football spending has jumped 113% but the entire department’s revenues have grown only 83%. At LSU, football spending jumped 44% and revenues just 40%.
In the same decade, football coaching salaries (the entire staff) jumped 106% in State College and 90% in Baton Rouge while ticket sales only added an additional 33% and 37% respectively and donor contributions jumped 53% and 66%.
The money owed can be mitigated. Most contracts include what are called best efforts clauses, which means the ex-coach can’t hole up in Cabo and get his entire paycheck. He has to look for a job, and should he land one, the salary owed will be less the salary gained.
“It’s like being divorced and paying alimony,’’ one of the board members joked. “You’re rooting for them to get remarried.’’
But it is not simply the head coaches that need to be paid out. The Advertiser in Louisiana reported that offensive coordinator Joe Sloan, fired along with Kelly, is due $530,000. Penn State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles reportedly is in the first year of a three-year deal worth $3.1 million annually and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki is making $2.4 million. It will be up to the next coach – who, by the way, will not come at a bargain-basement price – to decide if they stay on.
Meanwhile Penn State last year was on the hook for more than $900,000 in football coaching severance per the KnightNewhouse database, presumably due to Mike Yurcich, Kotelnicki’s predecessor who was fired in 2023.
Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft, who through a spokesperson declined comment for this story, has insisted that Franklin’s buyout is “an athletics issue. This is not the institution’s issue. We in athletics are covering the costs.”
But from where? “No one has the answer,’’ one of the board members said.
No signs of stopping
Still, the race to the top of the money pile goes on.
A pitch to turn to private equity for the Big Ten has at least temporarily stalled, in large part because of pushback from conference members USC and Michigan. Deep-pocketed donors are now being asked to foot the bill for coaching salaries, facilities improvements and – thanks to the House settlement – player contracts.
Virginia Tech recently announced a planned $229 million investment in athletics over the next four years. Along with seeking donor support for $30 million of that annually, the university said there will be “limited increases in student fees.’’ In 2024, student fees generated $14.5 million for the athletic department.
“That deal should terrify boards everywhere,’’ one of the trustees said.
Head coach Curt Cignetti of the Indiana Hoosiers celebrates after defeating Northwestern. - Michael Reaves/Getty Images
Despite the logic gleaned from the accounting books arguing to the contrary, spending is showing no signs of stopping. Curt Cignetti has done wonders at Indiana, elevating a program that ranked somewhere below historically dormant to No. 2 in the nation.
He has coached 21 games at Indiana – 21 at the FBS level entirely. And last week the school inked him to an eight-year, $93 million deal. It’s all guaranteed.
And less than 24 hours after the governor undercut Woodward at LSU, the athletic director was, to no one’s surprise, negotiating his exit strategy from the school. That leaves the school without a university president (William Tate left in May to take the same position at Rutgers), no football coach and no athletic director.
According to Yahoo Sports, Woodward is owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.4 million. The school is expected to honor the terms – another buyout on the Bayou.
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