Willie Taggart Will He Continue to Draw a Paycheck for Losing

Although no college athletics program likes seeing a winning coach leave, it can profit from the transaction.

A USA TODAY Sports analysis of coaching contracts and other documents finds that after paying a variety of transition costs, schools like Northern Illinois, Western Kentucky and Arkansas State each stand to add several hundred thousand dollars this school year from buyouts being triggered by their head football coaches' departures for other jobs. Those can be difference-making amounts in athletics budgets that range from $15 million to $25 million, modest by Football Bowl Subdivision standards.

"We don't want to turn our coaches over every two to three years, but you're doing it because you've been successful," says Northern Illinois athletics director Jeff Compher, who lost Jerry Kill to Minnesota after the 2010 season and Dave Doeren to North Carolina State this year. "As long as we're able to take the funds from buyouts to help better all of our programs, then I think that is something positive that comes out of it."

Nearly any head coach who breaks his contract to accept a position elsewhere in football must compensate the school he leaves. The new employer routinely agrees to cover those damages, but regardless of who pays, the goal for many schools outside the elite-level conferences is to "have a financial gain and perhaps a windfall," says Ross Bjork, a former Western Kentucky athletics director now at Mississippi.

Bjork negotiated the contract that set the terms for coach Willie Taggart's move from Western Kentucky to South Florida, which will bring WKU a $500,000 buyout and another $225,000 if South Florida chooses not to play WKU in a home-and-away series. WKU is using the money to help finance the high-profile hire of Bobby Petrino for $850,000 annually -- 80% more than Taggart was getting -- and a $1.2 million buyout if Petrino leaves.

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For a better funded, but still relatively modest athletics department like San Diego State's, money from a football coach's buyout can make a significant and widespread impact. After the 2010 season, San Diego State received $1 million when Brady Hoke left for Michigan. Athletics director Jim Sterk says his school's transition costs were minimal, so the department was able to put nearly the entire amount toward significantly reducing an accumulated operating debt.

"A football coach leaving is something that you don't want to have happen," Sterk says. "It ended up being a positive and helping us really continue the momentum that we had going in football." The Aztecs went a bowl game after Hoke's final season and are about to play in their third in as many seasons.

Northern Illinois is getting $750,000 from Doeren's move and got $500,000 for Kill's. NIU had heavy transition costs after Kill departed because nearly all of his assistants went with him, but Compher said the school was able to use more than half of that buyout for other purposes.

This time, Compher says, he is hoping to use money from the buyout to pay for upgrades to the locker rooms for Olympic sports -- especially women's teams -- and to add lights for NIU's soccer/track complex and its baseball field.

"There are things that we could use funding for that you don't readily have available (funds for) unless you have some kind of a major windfall such as this," Compher says.

In negotiating buyouts, however, Compher says: "I'm not thinking so much how we can profit from it. It's more about holding on to what we have than getting something for what we lost. ... You want there to be a little bit of a disincentive there for people coming in and just taking your coach."

But Compher also understands that it's going to be all but impossible for NIU to financially compete for coaches with schools like N.C. State, which be more than quintupling Doeren's annual salary and paying his buyout.

"I'm not sure that, regardless of what that (buyout) amount was, (Doeren) would have stayed," Compher says.

Arkansas State is trying to found out. In a little more than 12 months, the school has picked up $225,000 and then $700,000 off buyouts for Hugh Freeze and Gus Malzahn, each of whom left after one season.

On Wednesday, the school hired Texas co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin, who was being paid $700,000 this year. Arkansas State athletics director Terry Mohajir said Wednesday night that Harsin will receive the same roughly $850,000 in annual compensation that Malzahn had been getting. But Harsin will have greater incentives available, and the school will be increasing its payroll for assistant coaches by $150,000 to $200,000.

However, Harsin's buyout if he leaves before Jan. 31, 2014 will be $1.75 million, and it will be $1 million if leaves from Feb. 1, 2014 through Jan. 31, 2015.

"That," says Mohajir, "was non-negotiable."

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/mac/2012/12/12/college-football-coaches-buyouts-help-schools/1765085/

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