- Sep 8, 2014
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Robbie Andreu actually wrote a good article.... The Spurrier to Duke opening is great! And it's comical that the AD at Duke's name was "Butters"! :D
Football coaches across SEC negotiating rich rewards even for losing
http://www.gatorsports.com/2018/03/...sec-negotiating-rich-rewards-even-for-losing/
During Steve Spurrier’s first interview for a college football head coaching job, there were no lawyers or agents or advisors in the room. It was just Spurrier and Duke athletic director Tom Butters having a pleasant, one-on-one conversation.
The subject of money never came up.
“(Butters) said, ‘We want to hire you. Go back and talk to your wife Jerri,’ ” Spurrier said. “He called me back and I said, ‘I’m ready to come.’ So we had the press conference the next day. After the press conference, he said, ‘Come by tomorrow morning and I’ll tell you what you’re making and all your assistant coaches are making.’ I said, ‘OK.’ ”
Just like that, Spurrier took the job not knowing how long it would be for or how much he’d be making.
“I had no idea,” he said. “I walked in and he said, ‘The last coach here made $74,500. I’m going to bump you all the way up to $75,000 even.’ So I got $500 more than Steve Sloan. That was it. It was a one-year deal.”
That was back in 1987, 31 years ago. But it might as well be 100 years ago now, given how much has changed with the business end of college football since then.
We are now in the era of the mega, multi-year, multi-million dollar coaches’ contracts, where agents are involved and the money figures soar every year. And with the big contracts have come big buyouts that either go to the coach or the school if the contract is ended prematurely by one of the parties.
Following a 2017 season that saw 14 FBS coaches fired or forced out, schools are on the hook for almost $70 million in combined buyouts to coaches. The University of Florida is in for a $7.5 million chunk for parting ways with Jim McElwain.
The buyouts have become the next big thing in college football.
In negotiations between agents and athletic directors, the buyout clauses are now more difficult to settle on than the actual salary, says Martin Greenberg, a Wisconsin-based attorney who has specialized in college coaches’ contract formation and termination for more than 25 years.
“The truth to the matter now it’s not what the package number is, it’s the buyout number that is really important,” Greenberg said. “That’s where most of negotiations are going these days. You can pretty much determine the market rate for what a package is for a coach, based on the conference he plays in and the competition. It’s these backend deals, the exits, that have become the biggest negotiation points in college athletes.”
This is a fairly new trend.
Back in the day, Spurrier did not have a buyout clause in a new Duke contract he’d signed after the 1988 season. When Florida, his alma mater, came calling at the end of the 1989 season, he still had two years remaining on his contract, but there was no doubt he was leaving.
And Butters wasn’t about to try and stop him. Instead, he shook Spurrier’s hand and wished him good luck.
It doesn’t happen that way today.
Now, when a coach leaves for another school before his contract is up or he is fired without cause, money is going to flow to either to the coach or to the school.
Sometimes very big money — like the $10.4 million Texas A&M owed Kevin Sumlin for firing him without cause after last season.
Sometimes ridiculous money — like the $35 million Clemson would owe Dabo Swinney if the school did the same to him this year.
Infogram
And sometimes it flows in the opposite direction — like the $8 million Jimbo Fisher had to pay Florida State in December for breaking his long-term contract to sign a guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract with Texas A&M.
What it all means is that in college football, there is no sure thing when it comes to these lucrative, long-term contracts. Because either side — the school or the coach — can end it at any time if they are willing to pay the price, often a heavy one.
“We’re fooling the public (with these long-term contracts),” Greenberg said. “What we should really be saying is this is a contract where there’s no real reason anybody has to stay because both sides have the right to walk away from a committed term. All it takes is money. We know that recipient universities participate in the payment of basically the coach that we ultimately want. It’s like a revolving money circle.”
(The buyouts have also grown big in college basketball. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski has a $30-million buyout if he is fired without cause, while Kentucky coach John Calipari’s buyout is $19,570,000. At UF, Mike White’s is $8,822,917.)
The buyouts are critical for both sides.
In this era where ADs seem quicker and quicker to pull the plug on a coach when things aren’t going well on the field, the coaches are looking for some sort of financial security if they are fired without cause.
At the same time, the ADs are looking to hold onto successful coaches by making them pay if they choose to leave for another school before their contract ends.
“The buyout is one element of any agreement,” said former Florida football star and Gainesville-based agent Trace Armstrong, who represents several prominent college coaches, including Urban Meyer, Kevin Sumlin and Tom Herman. “There are multiple elements to them. You try to get something that’s balanced and works for both parties.”
There are two buyouts in every contract: one that goes to the coach if he’s fired without cause, the other to the school if the coach leaves for another school while he’s still under contract.
“I think with schools, as they look at a coach that maybe is not succeeding, there is the thought of, ‘What will it cost me to fire him?’ And that’s where those guarantees come in,” Armstrong said. “And there’s the other cost, what it costs the program (if a struggling coach is kept). Fan support and attendance and sponsorship sales, etc. A lot of times, they will look at coaches like this and just make a business decision (to fire them).”
Schools can fire coaches at any time without cause.
According to the Marquette Sports Law Review, termination without cause “usually involves a failure to win games, lagging tickets sales, dwindling attendance, unhappiness among boosters, loss of interest in the program, changes in atmosphere.”
Coaches fired with cause typically do not get a buyout.
“For cause, it implies some type of wrongdoing: moral turpitude, violation of NCAA, conference or university rules,” Armstrong said. “Losing games is not (considered a cause).”
That’s why coaches and agents try to negotiate significant buyouts. It provides some financial backup should a coach get fired for not winning enough.
When Texas fired Charlie Strong after the 2016 season, he gained some financial security in the form of a $10 million buyout to be paid in two installments over two years. But he said money is not what’s on a coach’s mind after he’s fired.
“You wonder if you’re ever going to coach again,” he said. “You still want to coach. It’s that more than anything else.”
Strong was not unemployed long. Two weeks after he was fired, he was hired as South Florida’s head coach.
Some of the buyouts appear outrageous — like the $40 million Clemson put on the first year of Dabo Swinney’s new contract last August. Armstrong said those big numbers can be deceiving because buyouts decrease over the course of the contract as the contract’s overall value becomes less.
“You say 40 million. But that’s someone that’s literally just signed a contract,” Armstrong said. “When you start looking at it from a practical standpoint, it’s really what happens after year two or year three in the agreement. That number is probably in reality, not quite as high. Most of these deals, many of them include offset litigation for a school has the opportunity to recoup some of its other losses.”
Texas got slight relief in the Strong buyout. The school had a 50-percent offset in Strong’s buyout if he landed another job. His first-year salary at USF was for $1 million, which means the buyout was reduced by only $500,000 for each of the two yearly installments.
As for coaches seeking financial security, Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin suggests they should start by looking in the mirror instead of at their buyout in their contract.
“From the school’s perspective, the guaranteed money for a coach who is not successful, that’s the one I wish we would all be smarter about,” Stricklin said. “You’re in effect, paying someone for failing. An agent or a coach will come back and say, ‘Well this person needs security.’
“Security is be successful and do your job well. That’s the only security any of us in life have. If you do well, and if you’re productive, then you have security. And if you don’t, you’re probably not going to have security.”
Boosters rarely contribute to a school’s buyout to a coach, but some of the cost can be passed on indirectly to the fans in terms of increased booster fees and raised ticket prices.
“In some ways, the fans would probably do their school more of a service if they just said, ‘We’re going to trust whoever you get, and go get the best guy and save us as much money as possible in the meantime,’ ” Stricklin said. “Because the fans end up paying for it in terms of tickets and donations.”
The way things are now, big money is changing hands with almost every coaching change.
SEC coaches buyouts
Infogram
(continues)
Football coaches across SEC negotiating rich rewards even for losing
http://www.gatorsports.com/2018/03/...sec-negotiating-rich-rewards-even-for-losing/
During Steve Spurrier’s first interview for a college football head coaching job, there were no lawyers or agents or advisors in the room. It was just Spurrier and Duke athletic director Tom Butters having a pleasant, one-on-one conversation.
The subject of money never came up.
“(Butters) said, ‘We want to hire you. Go back and talk to your wife Jerri,’ ” Spurrier said. “He called me back and I said, ‘I’m ready to come.’ So we had the press conference the next day. After the press conference, he said, ‘Come by tomorrow morning and I’ll tell you what you’re making and all your assistant coaches are making.’ I said, ‘OK.’ ”
Just like that, Spurrier took the job not knowing how long it would be for or how much he’d be making.
“I had no idea,” he said. “I walked in and he said, ‘The last coach here made $74,500. I’m going to bump you all the way up to $75,000 even.’ So I got $500 more than Steve Sloan. That was it. It was a one-year deal.”
That was back in 1987, 31 years ago. But it might as well be 100 years ago now, given how much has changed with the business end of college football since then.
We are now in the era of the mega, multi-year, multi-million dollar coaches’ contracts, where agents are involved and the money figures soar every year. And with the big contracts have come big buyouts that either go to the coach or the school if the contract is ended prematurely by one of the parties.
Following a 2017 season that saw 14 FBS coaches fired or forced out, schools are on the hook for almost $70 million in combined buyouts to coaches. The University of Florida is in for a $7.5 million chunk for parting ways with Jim McElwain.
The buyouts have become the next big thing in college football.
In negotiations between agents and athletic directors, the buyout clauses are now more difficult to settle on than the actual salary, says Martin Greenberg, a Wisconsin-based attorney who has specialized in college coaches’ contract formation and termination for more than 25 years.
“The truth to the matter now it’s not what the package number is, it’s the buyout number that is really important,” Greenberg said. “That’s where most of negotiations are going these days. You can pretty much determine the market rate for what a package is for a coach, based on the conference he plays in and the competition. It’s these backend deals, the exits, that have become the biggest negotiation points in college athletes.”
This is a fairly new trend.
Back in the day, Spurrier did not have a buyout clause in a new Duke contract he’d signed after the 1988 season. When Florida, his alma mater, came calling at the end of the 1989 season, he still had two years remaining on his contract, but there was no doubt he was leaving.
And Butters wasn’t about to try and stop him. Instead, he shook Spurrier’s hand and wished him good luck.
It doesn’t happen that way today.
Now, when a coach leaves for another school before his contract is up or he is fired without cause, money is going to flow to either to the coach or to the school.
Sometimes very big money — like the $10.4 million Texas A&M owed Kevin Sumlin for firing him without cause after last season.
Sometimes ridiculous money — like the $35 million Clemson would owe Dabo Swinney if the school did the same to him this year.
Infogram
And sometimes it flows in the opposite direction — like the $8 million Jimbo Fisher had to pay Florida State in December for breaking his long-term contract to sign a guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract with Texas A&M.
What it all means is that in college football, there is no sure thing when it comes to these lucrative, long-term contracts. Because either side — the school or the coach — can end it at any time if they are willing to pay the price, often a heavy one.
“We’re fooling the public (with these long-term contracts),” Greenberg said. “What we should really be saying is this is a contract where there’s no real reason anybody has to stay because both sides have the right to walk away from a committed term. All it takes is money. We know that recipient universities participate in the payment of basically the coach that we ultimately want. It’s like a revolving money circle.”
(The buyouts have also grown big in college basketball. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski has a $30-million buyout if he is fired without cause, while Kentucky coach John Calipari’s buyout is $19,570,000. At UF, Mike White’s is $8,822,917.)
The buyouts are critical for both sides.
In this era where ADs seem quicker and quicker to pull the plug on a coach when things aren’t going well on the field, the coaches are looking for some sort of financial security if they are fired without cause.
At the same time, the ADs are looking to hold onto successful coaches by making them pay if they choose to leave for another school before their contract ends.
“The buyout is one element of any agreement,” said former Florida football star and Gainesville-based agent Trace Armstrong, who represents several prominent college coaches, including Urban Meyer, Kevin Sumlin and Tom Herman. “There are multiple elements to them. You try to get something that’s balanced and works for both parties.”
There are two buyouts in every contract: one that goes to the coach if he’s fired without cause, the other to the school if the coach leaves for another school while he’s still under contract.
“I think with schools, as they look at a coach that maybe is not succeeding, there is the thought of, ‘What will it cost me to fire him?’ And that’s where those guarantees come in,” Armstrong said. “And there’s the other cost, what it costs the program (if a struggling coach is kept). Fan support and attendance and sponsorship sales, etc. A lot of times, they will look at coaches like this and just make a business decision (to fire them).”
Schools can fire coaches at any time without cause.
According to the Marquette Sports Law Review, termination without cause “usually involves a failure to win games, lagging tickets sales, dwindling attendance, unhappiness among boosters, loss of interest in the program, changes in atmosphere.”
Coaches fired with cause typically do not get a buyout.
“For cause, it implies some type of wrongdoing: moral turpitude, violation of NCAA, conference or university rules,” Armstrong said. “Losing games is not (considered a cause).”
That’s why coaches and agents try to negotiate significant buyouts. It provides some financial backup should a coach get fired for not winning enough.
When Texas fired Charlie Strong after the 2016 season, he gained some financial security in the form of a $10 million buyout to be paid in two installments over two years. But he said money is not what’s on a coach’s mind after he’s fired.
“You wonder if you’re ever going to coach again,” he said. “You still want to coach. It’s that more than anything else.”
Strong was not unemployed long. Two weeks after he was fired, he was hired as South Florida’s head coach.
Some of the buyouts appear outrageous — like the $40 million Clemson put on the first year of Dabo Swinney’s new contract last August. Armstrong said those big numbers can be deceiving because buyouts decrease over the course of the contract as the contract’s overall value becomes less.
“You say 40 million. But that’s someone that’s literally just signed a contract,” Armstrong said. “When you start looking at it from a practical standpoint, it’s really what happens after year two or year three in the agreement. That number is probably in reality, not quite as high. Most of these deals, many of them include offset litigation for a school has the opportunity to recoup some of its other losses.”
Texas got slight relief in the Strong buyout. The school had a 50-percent offset in Strong’s buyout if he landed another job. His first-year salary at USF was for $1 million, which means the buyout was reduced by only $500,000 for each of the two yearly installments.
As for coaches seeking financial security, Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin suggests they should start by looking in the mirror instead of at their buyout in their contract.
“From the school’s perspective, the guaranteed money for a coach who is not successful, that’s the one I wish we would all be smarter about,” Stricklin said. “You’re in effect, paying someone for failing. An agent or a coach will come back and say, ‘Well this person needs security.’
“Security is be successful and do your job well. That’s the only security any of us in life have. If you do well, and if you’re productive, then you have security. And if you don’t, you’re probably not going to have security.”
Boosters rarely contribute to a school’s buyout to a coach, but some of the cost can be passed on indirectly to the fans in terms of increased booster fees and raised ticket prices.
“In some ways, the fans would probably do their school more of a service if they just said, ‘We’re going to trust whoever you get, and go get the best guy and save us as much money as possible in the meantime,’ ” Stricklin said. “Because the fans end up paying for it in terms of tickets and donations.”
The way things are now, big money is changing hands with almost every coaching change.
SEC coaches buyouts
Infogram
(continues)