Football Fridays: Coaching Buyouts are Bonkers

Welcome to The Modern Day Renaissance Man newsletter. I, Trey Layton, write about the things that interest me, often covering topics such as startups, sports, and entertainment. If you'd like to receive these newsletters directly in your email a few times a week, go ahead and subscribe to never miss an email!

Happy Friday, folks.

I wrote an original opening line of "What do Liz Truss and Bryan Harsin have in common?" on Wednesday morning, already chuckling and slapping myself on the knee for making an internal turmoil joke. Then yesterday came, and Truss losing her job became a reality. Making a joke now seems a bit tasteless, innit bruv?

The British Parliament might actually be the only organization more dysfunctional than Auburn football right now. Since the Brexit decision, the government has been engrossed by conflict, most notably with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson facing intense scrutiny from both his political opponents and allies, alike. The controversy around him got so heated after his handling of the pandemic that he resigned, leaving an opening for Truss to take his spot as the head of government. Even though she is now the shortest serving PM in British history, given the disaster that marked every one of her 44 days in office, it was arguably still too long.

She consistently made poor fiscal decisions, loosening tax policies for a country already facing inflation rates even higher than those in the United States. These measures, if they were to have been enacted, would have only made this inflation worse. The only reason that they didn't get put into policy was that she reversed her fiscal stances multiple times following criticism from the public and other members of Parliament. Her biggest achievement in office? Proving you're never too old for a good old fashioned seesaw.

The NBA season also kicked off this week, and shocker, the Lakers' attempt at fielding a roster of players that peaked when Macklemore did has been a failure. Luckily for most fans, there's plenty of sports action to watch instead. Yesterday marked an ever-rare sports equinox, a day in which all four of the major American sports had games. This year, fans actually get a record of 4 such days of star alignment. Hope you enjoyed your NBA, MLB, NHL, and college football last night!

Sorry, NFL. I know that you're technically the fourth member of that exclusive category, but I'm choosing that pitiful Virginia-Georgia Tech game over the even more disgusting Saints-Cardinals game that you gave us...

With a subpar 3-4 record, Brian Harsin has shocked most of the college football world by remaining employed. It's not that he has been the worst coach in the world on the field, but despite having just one season on the job, the hire was surrounded by internal controversy from day 1 with half of the booster base vehemently opposed to hiring the Boise State product for the vacancy left behind by Gus Malzahn.

Even after making a bowl game in year 1, many of these same boosters did everything they could to drive him out of town by starting rumors of an affair with a staffer and other defamatory claims about locker room issues in an attempt to terminate his contract with cause. These attempts failed, and the man is still calling plays for the Tigers. And I thought divorced family dinners were awkward.

Not every person of power at Jordan-Hare has been so fortunate during the rocky start, though. Athletic Director Allen Greene "stepped down" a few weeks ago, but considering his only decision of importance in his short stint at AU was hiring Harsin, maybe it wasn't so much to spend more time with the wife as it was the university admin "accidentally" changing the locks on his office.

Many expect that his departure signals that the head coach will be the next one out of the door, but reports are surfacing that university officials are going to make a decision on the next AD before making a decision regarding the coach's future, a smart decision given that the alternative would be pairing an AD with a HC that isn't "his guy."

Given the importance of football as the sport at every college not named Duke or Syracuse (a list formerly containing Kansas and Kentucky, too), the choice of a head coach is arguably the most important decision that any AD makes. This hire is often the defining moment of a tenure and the reason why some work out and why some are at the school for less time than the freshman arriving in the same year.

Though Harsin is still officially the head coach, there are already rumors (and Vegas odds...) about the next top man for Auburn football, most of them aligned with certain AD hire predictions. Harsin can probably trade the time he would have spent game planning for the SEC West for time spent looking for vacation homes in Cabo. His buyout is going to make him a very wealthy man.

It seems that every single year, there are more and more stories about coaches getting fired earlier in the year, and this year is no exception. There have already been a number of openings at premier programs, and there are guaranteed to be more over the coming weeks.

The ever-growing profits to be had from the sport, the arms race for NIL deals to attract top recruits, and the growing trend of teams completely revamping their programs in the span of a year with the help of the transfer portal have all shortened the leash on coaches from four or five years to as few as one.

However, given the growing value and length of the contracts being offered to coaches, why are we seeing so many teams choose to buy their coaches out, particularly during the season when the financial repercussions are often double what they might be in even just a few weeks?

Let's look at the situation with Nebraska and former head coach Scott Frost for an explanation.

On paper, Frost was the type of home run typically reserved for Albert Pujols or Aaron Judge. He was the starting quarterback for the Huskers a couple of decades ago and led them to a championship in 1997 before emerging a few years ago as a hot commodity in the coaching scene after leading an 0-12 UCF team to an undefeated 13-0 "national championship" just two years later. The homecoming with his alma mater checked every box when he took the top job in 2017.

On the field, though, Frost was 16-31 with the Huskers showing no signs of improvement. Following embarrassing losses to Northwestern and Georgia... Southern, AD Trev Alberts hit Frost with a "new phone, who dis?"

The fact that Frost was fired was not surprising. Hell, even the fact that he was fired midseason was not a shock. What was wild was that had Nebraska waited fewer than 20 days to fire him, his contract buyout would have decreased from $15 million to $7.5 million...

Many fans might point to the contracts that other schools are paying out to coaches, the hundreds of millions of dollars being put invested into facilities, and the money being brought in by $8 stadium hot dogs and argue that the difference of a few million big ones is nothing. However, there might be deeper reasons for a decision like this one.

Though the unlikeliest of explanations, there's a possibility that administrators are just benevolent souls hoping to send off their coaches with a little extra spending money. Given the goodwill Frost had built up with the Huskers faithful as a player, it actually is plausible that this could have been a complementary factor. However, ADs are still running athletic programs. That means managing budgets like a real business, and wasting millions on "goodwill" payouts makes little financial sense in the tight-strapped world of college athletics.

More likely is the fact that the college football calendar has completely changed, even over just the past few years. Now, coaches must manage transfer portal windows and early signing day periods which have made coaching quite literally a full-year gig. The roster management timeline has been extended and pushed up so that 75% of the roster is set before Christmas.

Not having coaches in place during this important window puts programs at a severe disadvantage. To avoid this, coaches have to be in place with enough time to recruit existing commits, try to bring on a few new ones, and convince players already on the roster and in the transfer portal to call their program home between the last game of the season on Thanksgiving week and early signing period on December 15. The earlier a coach is fired, the more time an administration has to begin the search process for the replacement.

Perception is also a major part of the equation. For Nebraska, the firing happened the week before the rivalry matchup with Oklahoma. Many argue that entering the game with Frost, rather than the narrative focusing on the history and prestige of the two programs and the matchup, the storyline would have been on the disaster that was Frost's status with the Big Red.

Beyond this, spending such large amounts of money so shamelessly could also signal financial commitments to potential coaching candidates. If an AD is willing to pay that much money to stop losing right now, imagine the financial support and resources that they'd be willing and able to provide a coach to invest in actually winning with the best facilities and support staff.

Finally, there is the issue of culture, and this is where Frost's tenure suffered the most. The Huskers have historically been known as one of the toughest, most physical teams in the country. For the last five years, though, they've been consistently bullied by schools like Iowa, Wisconsin, and even Illinois. Every minute that Frost remained in the Nebraska locker room, the undisciplined culture that he had created was being further cemented. Current players have even spoken on this, such as when star defensive lineman transfer Ochaun Mathis claimed that "there's a losing culture going on" and that guys didn't know what it was like to win. The first step to fixing the problem is removing the source, even if it costs $7.5 million to do.

The Vols did it. The game was glorious. It had big plays, heroic moments, and coaching meltdowns. It has field stormings, a sad Bama player punching a Tennessee fan, and Vols students removing the goalposts and marching them to the Tennessee River. It had 15 years of built up emotion and heartbreak from the longest losing streak in the Bama-Tennessee rivalry, this being the first loss for the Tide under Saban. And best of all? I missed the whole thing 🫠

Unsurprisingly, there was some movement following a week featuring six top-25 matchups:

• Vols up to #3 from #6

• Undefeated TCU up to #8 after knocking off undefeated Okie Lite

• Utah back in the top 15 after beating previously undefeated USC

It's not really fair to expect this coming week to compete with the last. However, some that I recommend checking out:

• Undefeated orange ACC school matchup in #14 Syracuse heading to Death Valley to play the #5 Clemson Tigers

• #20 Texas traveling to Stillwater to play #11 OK State

• #9 UCLA @ #10 Oregon in the first top ten matchup between Pac 12 squads in four seasons

Got my booster shot yesterday. It's hitting me today. Not as hard as I expect Will Anderson to hit Will Rogers in Bama's bounce-back game, though.

Cheers to another day,

Trey