Louisville athletic director Vince Tyra is wary of a buyout trap

Vince Tyra’s goal is to hire a coach who won’t hamstring the University of Louisville, to avoid negotiating golden parachutes that act more like anchors.

Contractually committed to a $14 million buyout for deposed football coach Bobby Petrino, U of L’s cost-conscious athletic director is looking to limit his liability with Petrino’s replacement.

“We’re not going to be in a position where I’m willing to guarantee the full contract of any future head coach here,” Tyra said upon announcing Petrino’s firing on Sunday. “The magnitude of the dollars is different today than they were five years ago (or) 10 years go, where people guaranteed full contracts.”

As the salaries of Division I college football and basketball coaches continue to rise, so has the cost of getting rid of them. Multiple media outlets calculated last year that contractual buyouts forced schools to pay more than $70 million to Football Bowl Subdivision coaches for not coaching.

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“One has to give a tip of the hat to the agents that negotiate what are really one-sided contracts and hugely beneficial to the coach,” said David Ridpath, a professor of sport administration at Ohio University. “... Universities are stupid enough to agree to something like this knowing there is a high chance of terminating the coach prior to contract term.”

In hiring Jimbo Fisher away from Florida State, Texas A&M pushed the potential price of firing a single coach to $68 million. If that seems extravagant and/or irresponsible for a public university, it also reflects college football’s soaring revenues and compressed player costs.

Despite the sticker shock many U of L fans have felt about Petrino’s buyout, his severance package ranked only 22nd in USA TODAY’s college football salary survey and just fifth among Atlantic Coast Conference coaches. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, to cite an unlikely example, would be entitled to $35 million if he were let go without cause.

When coaches win, the buyout terms that generate the most attention are those related to what it would cost another school to poach them. Purdue coach Jeff Brohm, generally regarded as U of L’s most coveted candidate, currently has a $4.4 million buyout that drops to $3.3 million as of Dec. 6.

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Yet if Purdue suddenly tired of Brohm, as improbable as that might seem, the tab to get rid of him would be $21.5 million. As college coaches have acquired more negotiating leverage, the cost of canning them has become virtually prohibitive in some places.

Much as many Auburn fans might want to move on from Gus Malzahn, for example, his $32 million buyout affords him considerable job security. Similarly, Florida State Willie Taggart, who has compiled a 4-6 record in his first season with the Seminoles, is insulated by a buyout of nearly $22 million.

In an intensely competitive marketplace, swimming against the tide has its perils. Tyra understands that high-profile coaches command a premium, and that a multi-million-dollar buyout “may not be enjoyable, but I think it’s part of the business model.”

That said, in negotiating Chris Mack’s seven-year contract to coach U of L basketball, Tyra succeeded in limiting Louisville’s worst-case obligations to three years of Mack’s salary. Whether Brohm would be willing to accept a similar buyout is unknown, but that could entail leaving multiple millions of security behind in West Lafayette, Ind.

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“I don’t know how much is enough for people, but I also recognize that I don’t want to short the program,” Tyra said. “But that’s a fine balance that I have in knowing how far I think the Louisville program should go and what we have available that they should want."

He expects to be able to make a competitive offer. He will attempt to avoid tying his own hands.

“If they don’t want to be here and the buyout is the sticking point, then they don’t want to be here — it's as simple as that," Tyra said. "... If it’s all about what their buyout is to leave on their terms or our terms, then we’ve got the wrong people.”

Tim Sullivan: 502-582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @TimSullivan714. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/tims.