SEC Football Coach Buyouts Surpass $230 Million

The SEC’s tradition and passion is echoed through the slogan, “It Just Means More.” It also costs more, especially when it comes to buyouts of football coaches. Hefty buyouts that are in the six figures when combining just the top two college football has seen.

It costs LSU $54 million to jettison Brian Kelly, a move that was made after a home-field embarrassment at the hands of Texas A&M. Kelly was in Baton Rouge for three and a half seasons after agreeing to a 10-year, $100-million deal to lead the Tigers.

Kelly had a pair of 10-win seasons, one SEC title game appearance (2022, his first season) and went 3-0 in bowl games. Of course, the Citrus, ReliaQuest and Texas bowls against unranked teams were not what he, or anyone else in Baton Rouge, signed up for. Certainly not athletic director Scott Woodward. More on him in a minute.

Kelly’s firing came one week to the day after Florida canned Billy Napier, who left the Swamp with a $21.5 buyout. It was a tumultuous ride upstream for the coach, especially beginning with the 2024 season opener when the Gators were blown out (41-17) by visiting Miami. A strong finish to the season with then-true freshman D.J. Lagway leading the offense had the fan base looking forward to 2025. Alas, a Week 2 loss to visiting USF served to open the wounds once again. That was followed by setbacks at LSU and at Miami – the Gators scored all of 23 points in the three losses – that rendered Napier’s fate a question of when and not if. Including the annual cocktail party with Georgia last year, Napier lost his last six SEC games away from Gainesville. His final game was a win against visiting Mississippi State to finish 22-23 at UF.

Jimbo Fisher’s buyout legacy

Jimbo Fisher’s name has conveniently surfaced each of the last couple of autumns after he was dismissed at Texas A&M in November 2023. An extension agreed upon two years earlier resulted in a $77.5 million buyout that was and remains (for now) the gold standard. As such, Fisher’s name will always be at the ready this time of year.

The aforementioned Scott Woodward has carved out quite a name for himself in the SEC. After all, he was the athletic director at A&M when he lured Fisher away from Florida State in December 2017, and to the tune of 10 years and $70 million. It was Woodward, who left for LSU in the spring of 2019, that announced Kelly’s firing.

There is a more than $130 million in buyouts between Fisher and Kelly. The former went 45-25 (.642) with the Aggies and the latter 34-14 (.708) with the Tigers. When figuring their respective separation pay packages, that works out to $1.72 million per win for Fisher in College Station and $1.7 million for Kelly in Baton Rouge.

The man hired to replace Fisher is doing just fine in his second season at the helm. Mike Elko’s Aggies are 8-0 and No. 3 in both polls following the dismantling of LSU in Kelly’s final game. The defensive coordinator at A&M (2017-2021) under Fisher, Elko departed for Duke and his first head-coaching gig after the 2021 season. He returned to College Station after agreeing to a six-year deal with an annual base of $7 million.

Other notable SEC buyouts this decade

Gus Malzahn | Auburn | $21.4 Million
Malzahn’s buyout was the largest at the time he was fired, which was following a 6-4 season in pandemic-disrupted 2020. That ended an eight-year run at Auburn in which he went 68-35 (.660) and took the Tigers to the BCS national title game (last-minute loss to Florida State, where he is currently employed) in his first season on the Plains. Auburn is seeking to avoid a fifth straight sub-.500 season since Malzahn’s dismissal.

Ed Orgeron | LSU | $16.8 Million
You may recall the man Kelly succeeded at LSU had a nice post-firing compensation package, the final installment of which he was scheduled to receive this year. He went 51-20 (.718) in six seasons. Hence, the last two LSU coaches went a combined 75-34 (.688) over a 10-season stretch. More than half of Orgeron’s defeats were in his final two seasons (11-11) of 2020 and 2021, which followed the Joe Burrow-led 2019 national championship campaign.

Bryan Harsin | Auburn | $15.3 Million
The man that took over for Malzahn was gone after less than two seasons and a 9-12 mark. After going 69-19 at Boise State, Harsin arrived in 2021 and went 4-9 in SEC play. With Harsin’s firing, Auburn committed nearly $37 million in buyouts to two coaches in two years. There is much chatter concerning the job security of Harsin’s successor, Hugh Freeze, who would have similar buyout terms.

Will Muschamp | South Carolina | $12.9 Million
Not only did the Gamecocks fail to build on a nine-win 2017 season, but they bottomed out at 2-8 in 2020 with Muschamp fired after seven games. He went 28-30 in four-plus seasons in Columbia. His buyout at Florida, where he was fired prior to the end of the 2014 season, was $6.3 million.

Dan Mullen | Florida | $12 Million
The Gators’ most recent double-digit win season was under the current UNLV coach in 2019. That was the second of back-to-back such seasons as well as top 10 finishes that earned Mullen an extension. Two years later, Mullen was gone. An overtime loss at Missouri toward the end of the 2021 season dropped the Gators to 5-6 and with nine losses in their last 11 games against power conference teams. Mullen went 34-15 for a .694 winning percentage that is third best at UF among those who coached at least 25 games.

Sam Pittman | Arkansas | $8.7 Million
Fired earlier this season, all of the arrows were pointing up for Pittman following the Hogs’ Outback Bowl win over Penn State – the last playing of the bowl under the steakhouse chain’s name — to cap a nine-win season in 2021. It has since been a slippery slide southward for Arkansas. A pair of 7-6 showings that required bowl wins to get over .500 is as good as it has since been. Indeed, the Pittman-coached Razorbacks went 20-23 since the win over the Nittany Lions. While middle-of-the-pack bowls were not the desire, it is worth noting Pittman, like Kelly, went 3-0 in bowl games. Pittman had not previously been a head coach at a four-year institution.

When you figure in the buyouts of other coaches, such as Zach Arnett at Mississippi State ($4.5) and Derek Mason at Vanderbilt where he made $3.5 million in his final season coaching the Commodores in 2020, the overall total approaches a quarter of a billion dollar for the current decade.

Jeremy Pruitt is not on this list because he has not seen a penny of what would have been a $12.6 million buyout after he was fired at Tennessee following the 2020 season amid several recruiting violations. He sued the NCAA earlier this year seeking $100 million in lost wages. Pruitt went 16-19 in three seasons with the Vols.