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Athletic Directors Keep Handcuffing Themselves With Ludicrous Coaching Contracts

Are athletic directors trapping themselves in outrageous coaching contracts that hinder their programs?

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By Rock Westfall

Last year, the Texas A&M Aggies paid Jimbo Fisher over $75 million to get out of town after extending him with a $95 million contract in 2021 to prevent Fisher from bolting to the LSU Tigers. Fisher got his deal after a 9-1 record in the 2020 COVID season, which was the only campaign in which he met expectations in his six years at College Station.

The Fisher debacle was a portent. In many cases, if a college football coach can put together one promising season, he will hit the lottery and get extended. Agents such as Jimmy Sexton, who may be the most powerful and influential man in college football, play schools off each other and terrify athletic directors into backing up the truck.

This year, we are seeing numerous cases of athletic directors and schools handcuffing themselves with terrible contracts based on panic attacks induced by manipulative agents like Sexton, who play them like a violin. Yet, interestingly enough, ADs rarely pay for such mistakes.

In some cases, fan and donor demands make it politically impossible to let coaches walk. But in most cases, the contract extensions are too early, too big, and unnecessary.

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Mike Alford Overseeing Catastrophe at Florida State 

Mike Alford might be having one of the worst seasons for an athletic director in history. After spending over a year whining that the Atlantic Coast Conference was not good enough for Florida State, and wasting millions of dollars on legal fees trying to escape, Alford had to return, hat in hand, to work out a new TV deal with the ACC, since no other league wanted FSU and never did.  

Meanwhile, after coach Mike Norvell led the Seminoles to a 12-1 record and a near miss for the 2023 College Football Playoff, Alford rushed to extend him for eight years with a buyout of $84 million.

This season, Norvell is 1-7 and has been exposed for neglecting recruiting in favor of the transfer portal. Once his players quit on Norvell after the CFP snub, FSU was left holding an empty bag. A different coach could have done no worse and avoided the golden handcuffs.

Joe Castiglione: Too Much, Too Soon With Brent Venables 

Brent Venables arrived at Oklahoma for the 2022 season and compiled records of 6-7 and 10-3 in his first two years. Based on perceived improvement and Oklahoma’s move to the SEC, athletic director Joe Castiglione extended Venables last summer with a new deal worth over $51 million.

This year, after failing to keep 2024 Heisman Trophy contending QB Dillon Gabriel (now at Oregon), Venables banked on 5-star recruit Jackson Arnold. The change backfired as Arnold has spent much of the season on the bench due to poor performances. Oklahoma is 4-4 and in serious jeopardy of missing a bowl game, with a murky future and a discredited head coach.  

Jennifer Cohen Inherits the Miserable Life of Riley

Lincoln Riley left Oklahoma for the USC Trojans in November 2021 and was rewarded by then-AD Mike Bohn with a 10-year deal worth $110 million. It is undeniable that, at the time, the hiring was celebrated as a coup.

But now, current AD Jennifer Cohen is stuck with a coach performing worse than his predecessor, Clay Helton, and facing a 4-4 start with thousands of empty seats at the Los Angeles Coliseum. With a buyout of around $90 million, USC and Riley find themselves stuck with each other.

Wren Baker Oversees Brownout at West Virginia  

Last year, West Virginia head coach Neal Brown was on one of the hottest seats in the land. But Brown scraped together a 9-4 record, only his second winning season in five years, to escape the firing squad. Athletic director Wren Baker gambled that it was a sign of better days to come and extended Brown through 2027. Baker did manage a buyout of 75% of the remaining contract that pays a little more than $4 million per season.

But West Virginia is 4-4 and going nowhere fast this season. Because of the extension and West Virginia’s mid-tier status, Brown should be safe for at least next year, much to the annoyance of Mountaineer fans, who believe the contract was unnecessary based on one decent season out of five. 

Terry Mohajir Pays Big for Broken Gus Bus  

And then there is the case of Gus Malzahn of Central Florida and his athletic director, Terry Mohajir. Gus arrived at UCF after being fired at Auburn and getting a $21.7 million buyout.

Once upon a time, the Gus Bus was a big deal when he went 12-2 in his first year (2013) as Auburn’s head coach while nearly winning the national championship. At that time, he was celebrated as the man who would reinvent the game. 

However, following that initial success, Malzahn lost at least four games in every remaining season that he was at Auburn. Occasionally, he upset Nick Saban and Alabama to avoid the posse and appease the faithful, gaining an extension in 2017. 

At UCF Gus went 9-4 and 9-5 in his first two seasons in the American Athletic Conference. A 6-7 record followed that in 2023 when UCF joined the Big 12. But in the midst of that struggling campaign, Malzahn was extended through 2028 with a buyout of almost $14 million.

Previously, Scott Frost and Josh Heupel performed much better for far less money at UCF. There is no indication that Malzahn will be able to jumpstart the Gus Bus, as the inconsistency that got him fired at Auburn has carried over to UCF, a school that should be doing big things in a weaker Big 12 Conference.

The more money that keeps coming into college football, the more it is blown on coaching contract handcuffs and massive buyouts. It’s an eternal cycle with no end in sight..  

We long for a day when schools declare, “enough is enough.”

But don’t hold your breath. 

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