The tagline of The New Leaf Journal is Where the leaves are perennially virid. I will concede that some articles are more evergreen than others. But sometimes something I write at one point turns out to be unexpectedly relevant at another. Below, I present two examples involving very expensive college football coach buyouts.
On November 14, 2023, four years ago to the date of publication of the instant article, I published On Coach Jimbo Fisher’s Buyout. The subject of the article was the price tag on Texas A&M’s decision to fire its football coach, Jimbo Fisher. I encourage you to read that article before continuing, but I will excerpt the pertinent points below for the purpose of setting up this article.
Jimbo Fisher is a college football coach. In 2018, he signed a 10 year, $75 million contract to become the head coach of the Texas A&M Aggies. Mr. Fisher’s stock was high after Texas A&M ended the 2020 season ranked 4th in the country. The Louisiana State Tigers (“LSU”), an in-conference rival, had just fired their head coach, Ed Orgeron, late in the 2021 season, despite his having coached LSU to the 2019 National Championship. I wrote about the Orgeron firing at the time, specifically focusing on the fact that Louisiana State had to pay Mr. Orgeron $17 million to not coach its football team. LSU was then on the prowl for a new football coach, and the hot rumor was that they were fishing in College Station, preparing an 8 year, $125 million contract offer for Jimbo Fisher. Texas A&M tranquilized the threat by extending Mr. Fisher’s contract, promising him $95.6 million through 2031.
Texas A&M won the battle for Coach Fisher’s services. However, by 2023, it appears that the Texas A&M Athletics Department concluded it had lost the war in the football trenches. After falling short of expectations in 2021 and 2022 and not quite living up to lofty expectations in 2023, Texas A&M fired Mr. Fisher without cause on November 12, 2023. Because 90% of Mr. Fisher’s contract was guaranteed in the event of his being terminated without cause, Texas A&M was on the hook for $76.8 million.
But enough about Texas A&M. What happened to LSU? Back in 2023 I threw in an note about Louisiana State as an aside in my article about Mr. Fisher:
LSU landed on its feet, hiring Brian Kelly away from Notre Dame for 10 years, $100 million.
I was simply stating a fact. LSU had in fact lured Brian Kelly away from Notre Dame with a 10 year, $100 million contract after Jimbo Fisher extended his contract with Texas A&M. While I have joked about seeing the future, I cannot actually see the future. Speaking of the future, I present an October 26, 2025 press release from the LSU Athletics Department:
LSU Athletics has made the decision to separate with football head coach Brian Kelly effective immediately, Director of Athletics Scott Woodward announced Sunday.
(Make a note of the name Scott Woodward. We will get to him in due course.)
I am sure my very astute readers can see where this is headed based on how I started the article, but let us first add another fun layer to this story. I again quote from the LSU press release:
The Tigers fell to 5-3 this season and 2-3 in SEC play following a home loss to No. 3 Texas A&M on Saturday night.
We are coming full circle! (“Saturday night” refers to the night immediately before the firing of Coach Kelly.)
According to the LSU press release, the “[t]erms of separation are still being negotiated.” That was true, but it takes more than one party to negotiate when there is a contract at issue. What happens when the parties have very different ideas of what is being negotiated? On November 7, 2025, the New York Post reported that under the terms of his contract, Brian Kelly was owed $54 million pursuant to being terminated without cause. The report notes that Mr. Kelly was open to negotiating the settlement amount, but three days later, the Post reported that LSU’s offers of $25 and $30 million were, unsurprisingly, not moving Mr. Kelly to accept less than the contracted amount of 54 million. Having apparently been insulted by LSU’s determination to pay something in the neighborhood of half of what it owes Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kelly is now threatening to sue LSU if it does not present a plan to pay the full $54 million it owes (the Post specified that Mr. Kelly, like Mr. Fisher before him, is owed 90% of the remaining money on his contract). ESPN reported on the same day that Mr. Kelly’s attorneys noted in their legal filings that “LSU has taken the position that it has not ‘formally terminated'” Mr Kelly, notwithstanding its press release on October 26, but now assert that there are grounds for termination for cause. (I have my doubts about the strength of LSU’s position, but I will leave that for the lawyers and courts to sort out.)
Mr. Kelly was not the only person from LSU to be fired. As the name of the school suggests, LSU is a State university. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry summoned the LSU brain trust for consultations about the plan to fire Mr. Kelly. Missing from the meeting was LSU’s now-former Athletic Director, Scott Woodward, who had made the decision back in 2018 to fire Mr. Orgeron and hire Mr. Kelly after unsuccessfully pursuing Mr. Fisher. Governor Landry made clear after Mr. Kelly had been fired that Mr. Woodward would not be involved in selecting Mr. Kelly’s replacement. In fact, Mr. Woodward will no longer be involved with LSU at all. He was fired on October 30 (it is unclear whether he will receive the entire $6 million owed to him pursuant to his contract).
I did not mention Scott Woodward in my previous article, but what if I told you that we are really coming full circle. From Tom Aswell at Louisiana Voice:
While serving as athletic director at A&M it was Woodward who signed Fisher to a 10-year, $75 million contract in December 2017 … Of course, Woodward … was responsible for the hiring of Kelly to that $95 million pact on Nov. 30, 2021. Obviously, Woodward wasn’t around for Fisher’s firing – he left A&M but the fact remains that he was the one responsible for hiring both coaches.
Mr. Woodward was the Athletic Director at Texas A&M and responsible for the initial hiring of Jimbo Fisher. He left Texas A&M for LSU in April 2019. At LSU, he fired Ed Orgeron (resulting in a $17 million buyout), apparently looked into snagging Mr. Fisher from Texas A&M, and then hired Mr. Kelly leading to firing of Mr. Kelly while being owed $54 million.
To be sure, Mr. Woodward only hired Mr. Fisher in the first instance and was not responsible for Mr. Fisher’s big contract extension (albeit he may have been indirectly responsible through trying to poach Mr. Fisher). Moreover, Mr. Fisher was living up to his contract (so to speak, living up is subjective) at the time Texas A&M extended him in 2020. But broadly speaking, Mr. Woodward has a hand in three of the largest college football coach buyouts.
My opinions on the college football coach buyouts are unchanged from when I wrote about Messrs. Orgeron and Fisher, so I need not re-invent the wheel here. I will note that Mr. Kelly had a 34-14 record at LSU in one of the top two conferences in college football, so while he may not have yet lived up to LSU’s national championship ambitions, I question whether his performance was so subpar as to trigger a $54 million buyout. LSU was better than Texas A&M had been in its last couple of seasons under Mr. Fisher. Of course, the Texas A&M monster buyout may have perversely inspired LSU. As of the publication date of the instant article, Texas A&M is 9-0, making it one of just three undefeated teams remaining in the top division of college football, and is ranked third in the College Football Playoff Rankings behind fellow undefeated teams Ohio State (9-0) and Indiana (10-0) (I am having some trouble wrapping my head around Indiana suddenly being a football power, but that is neither here nor there). LSU is no doubt looking for a similar outcome in making a historically expensive coaching change.
(Aside: Mr. Kelly’s former school, Notre Dame, is 7-2 and 9th in the College Football Playoff Ranking after losing in the National Championship Game last year. Maybe Coach Kelly should have stayed put.)
