Think Mark Stoops’ $37.7 million buyout is steep? Other coaches are owed far more
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky would owe Mark Stoops about $37.7M if it fires him without cause.
- Twelve coaches carry larger 2025 buyouts, led by Kirby Smart at $105.1M.
- Universities could limit buyouts by trading long terms for lower annual pay.
College football has a “buyout problem.”
For the second time in three school years, there is harsh focus on the contract buyout the University of Kentucky would owe one of its most-visible head men if UK decided to remove that coach without cause (in other words, for losing).
After the 2023-24 men’s basketball season, when many Wildcats backers were pleading for a coaching change, it would have cost Kentucky just under $34 million to remove John Calipari as top Cat. Instead, Cal did UK a solid by leaving for Arkansas of his own volition.
Now, with Kentucky football fortunes trending downward, a good percentage of the Big Blue Nation seems ready to move on from head man Mark Stoops. Problem is, it will cost UK just under $38 million if it decides to part in 2025 with its 13th-year head football coach.
With so much consternation directed at University of Kentucky administration over the head coaching contracts it has granted, I wanted to get a sense of whether UK’s agreement with Stoops was more favorable to him than is industry standard.
According to the new USA Today College Football Head Coach Salaries database, the monetary value of the Stoops buyout is not an industry outlier. There are six Big Ten head coaches, four SEC head men and two ACC coaches who all have larger contract buyouts for 2025 than does Stoops.
In descending order, these are the 15 largest coaching contract buyouts — what the schools would have to pay the coaches if they ousted them without cause — in college football for 2025 (source: USA Today):
1. Kirby Smart, Georgia: $105,100,000;
2. Ryan Day, Ohio State: $70,916,667;
3. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama: $60,800,000;
4. Steve Sarkisian, Texas: $60,300,000;
5. Dabo Swinney, Clemson: $60,000,000 (drops to $57 million on Jan. 1, 2026);
6. Mike Norvell, Florida State: $58,667,708 (after Dec. 1);
7. Dan Lanning, Oregon: $56,733,333;
8. Curt Cignetti, Indiana: $56,700,000;
9. Brian Kelly, LSU: $53,300,000;
10. Matt Rhule, Nebraska: $49,612,500;
11. Bret Bielema, Illinois: $49,491,667;
12. James Franklin, Penn State: $48,666,667;
13. Mark Stoops: Kentucky: $37,700,000;
14. Josh Heupel, Tennessee: $37,500,000;
15. Lane Kiffin, Mississippi: $36,600,000.
You will note that out of that 15 there are four coaches — Norvell, Kelly, Franklin and Stoops — who are, to varying degrees, currently on the hot seat.
Private universities are not subject to open-records laws, so the contract buyouts — which one presumes are hefty — for coaches such as USC’s Lincoln Riley and Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman are not available.
Louisville head man Jeff Brohm has a $33,633,333 contract buyout for 2025; Western Kentucky coach Tyson Helton has a buyout of $2,916,007.
Paying coaches millions upon millions of dollars to go away has never been the most efficient use of resources. In the emerging era when universities that field major college sports programs are required to share athletics revenue with their players, buying out coaches puts dead money on the books in a time when there is no financial margin of error.
The question is how do schools break free from massive contract buyouts for coaches?
Since buyouts are usually pegged to both the salary and the term of coaching contracts, universities could offer coaches a choice: Either a high annual salary or a long-running contract — but not both.
The risk in that, however, is that for an individual school to draw the line, it essentially will have to be willing to let a winning coach leave when at his greatest heights. Successful coaches always have options, and some university will be willing to risk a lavish coaching buyout as an inducement to take its job.
For all the criticism there is directed at UK presently over what would be the mammoth cost of separating with Stoops after the current season, it is only fair to keep in mind that the university agreed to its deal with its football coach in 2022, when Kentucky was fresh off what was its second 10-win season in four years.
This at a football program that has only had four double-digit win campaigns in its entire history.
University of Kentucky football fans have been haunted for five-plus decades by the school having failed to keep its greatest coach, one Paul “Bear” Bryant, for the long haul.
In that context, the reaction in 2022 to letting Stoops — the only coach in UK history with two 10-win seasons (although the second one, in 2021, was subsequently vacated for NCAA rules violations) — walk away would have been vitriolic.
Things look different three years later, now that Kentucky football is mired in multiple negative streaks. The Wildcats are 3-17 in their past 20 games against power-conference foes. UK has lost eight SEC games in a row and 12 of its past 13.
Still, that there are 12 college football head men whose contract buyouts are larger than the almost $38 million Mark Stoops would be owed carries a lesson: The issue of extravagant “golden parachutes” for college football coaches is a problem whose magnitude extends beyond Kentucky.
