Big Contracts, Big Buyouts, Big Pressure: College Football Coaches Hit the Jackpot
The New York Times
Brian Kelly will earn at least $9 million a year at L.S.U., which is paying its old coach almost $17 million to step aside. Top universities have become steppingstones to other top gigs.
The contract terms for Louisiana State University’s new football coach promise an unusually enormous payout for mediocrity: If the Tigers win just half of their regular-season games, de rigueur for a program with three national championships since 2003, Brian Kelly will receive $500,000 — on top of at least $9 million a year in other compensation.
And every July, no matter his record, Kelly will earn a $500,000 “longevity” bonus if he remains in charge in Baton Rouge.
The line items for middling achievements are helping to mark the pathway for college football’s era of $10-million-a-year coaches. And they are part of the latest blur of coaching contracts and buyouts, collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars, at a time when the college sports industry is facing accusations that it is exploiting the athletes who cannot earn salaries for actually playing the games.
