Of buyouts and boosters: How NIL can force college football to come to its senses | Goodbread

Jimbo is safe.

Saying goodbye would reportedly be too costly, as earlier this month, The Athletic reported that Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher's $86 million buyout was entirely too cost-prohibitive to fire him after a brutal 5-7 season. Former LSU coach Ed Orgeron walked away with what seems comparatively like a paltry sum of $17 million and joked about it on his way out the door. Fired Nebraska coach Scott Frost has all the luck, getting almost $16 million not to coach past a September loss − his 31st in 47 games − to a Georgia Southern team that was paid $1.4 million for the trip to Lincoln.

Buyouts are out of control, to be sure. But there's finally a compelling reason for athletics directors at big-time schools to start being more penny-wise: NIL.

It is, of course, the new currency in recruiting. Hundreds of thousands for top-shelf  quarterbacks. Millions for an elite signing class. And it's all coming out of the same pockets − those of well-heeled boosters − that have to be emptied to buy out a losing coach. They don't get well-heeled by throwing good money after bad, yet that's precisely what these buyouts are, and you'd better believe a lot of them would rather keep their schools' NIL coffers stuffed than stuff the pockets of an exiting coach who disappointed.

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Eventually, if it hasn't already, that message will be sent. Players who win games are being bought. Meanwhile, coaches who lose them are walking away after miserably bad job performances with a golden parachute that would make an ousted Forbes 500 CEO blush. We should all be so lucky as to be paid generational wealth for being fired.

The smart athletics directors are going to start hard-lining coaches' agents on buyouts. They definitely won't disappear, but don't be surprised to see them progressively dialed back − one contract at a time. That's not to suggest that schools collude in that effort, but if the flow of NIL money is at stake, they'd be wise to come down with a contagious rash of common sense. If necessary, pay coaches a bigger salary to offset smaller buyout clauses; at least that's pay for on-the-clock work.

Big walk-away bucks are a different story. The not-so-smart ADs will keep signing off on tens of millions essentially thrown away; and over time, better and more compelling examples will be made of them for it. NIL war chests will lighten for massive buyouts, which will in turn hamstring their next coaching hire.

Did the tension between buyout money and NIL dollars have anything to do with Auburn landing Hugh Freeze as its new coach as opposed to Lane Kiffin? Who knows. But we certainly know this much: Auburn's buyouts of Bryan Harsin and former coach Gus Malzahn totaled about $36 million, and Kiffin has made it clear he regards NIL treasury to be of integral importance. If and when he is pried away from Ole Miss, it won't just be for more money in his own pocket. He'll want a deeper NIL pool, as well.

Those dollars, after all, will be better spent than the severance handed to the coach he replaces.

Reach Chase Goodbread at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Of buyouts and boosters: How NIL can bring schools to their senses