It pays to be a good college football head coach, but it pays even more to be represented by someone like Jimmy Sexton. The SEC coaching mega agent is largely responsible for most of the conference having head coaches making upwards of $7 million annually. While the guys at the top of the list are certainly worth every penny (Nick Saban, Kirby Smart), others may not be (Jimbo Fisher)...
Three of the five Power Five head coaches with the largest active buyouts have national championship victories in the last decade under the belts. However, Jimbo Fisher sitting comfortably at No. 2 with a $77.6 million buyout to Kirby Smart at No. 1 with $92.6 million certainly complicates things. Unlike all other coaches on this list, Fisher's 2022 team didn't even get to play in a bowl game.
So with Brian Kelly ($70 million), James Franklin ($64.7 million) and Dabo Swinney ($64 million) rounding out the top five, you have to wonder what this means going forward for all five schools in question. Georgia is Georgia, so Smart is worth every penny. Penn State is having its best season since winning the Big Ten in 2016, so it makes what Franklin's buyout would look significantly better.
But with Clemson and LSU firmly eliminated from the College Football Playoff with two losses well before Halloween and Fisher sitting at 4-1 in a prove it year with an injured quarterback, something has to give, right? This may all come down to the price of a barrel of oil in December. LSU is not moving on from Kelly after last year's success, but Clemson is regressing massively under Swinney.
These may be five of the 15 best jobs in college football, but man, those are some gigantic numbers.
College football buyouts: What 5 head coaches will cost the most to fire?
Look. The only one of these five head coaches in question potentially getting fired any time soon is Fisher at Texas A&M. He came to College Station with the final BCS National Championship victory from his days at Florida State. Once Jameis Winston turned pro, the Seminoles program went into the toilet for nearly a decade. Not until the transfer portal king Mike Norvell got going, Florida State stunk.
Waiting for Fisher on his desk in College Station was a participation national championship trophy with years and decades to be engraved onto it. Although he has had a few nice wins at Texas A&M, it should not take the Aggies this long to be near the top of the college football world. They had the No. 1 recruiting class two cycles ago and then proceeded to go 5-7... This is coaching malpractice, people.
While Smart is in Athens for as long as he wants, we do have to wonder how much longer Kelly likes being in the SEC, how much longer before Franklin wins just enough to get courted by another bigger program and how much longer Swinney will tolerate college football being a forever changing entity. Swinney, and perhaps Kelly, may not be built for this college football era in the wonderful world of NIL.
Some of these buyout figures are mind-blowing, which means no school wants to fire these coaches.
