In the world of big-time college football, job security isn’t the most stable when comparing it to most professions. That is of course an understatement, and when a coach doesn’t produce wins on the field or is a model citizen as the face of a program off the field, it’s not long before a pink slip shows up.
However, sometimes it’s not that easy. A fan’s instant reaction to frustrations with a head coach is to call for a resignation or firing, but there are real dollars associated with those types of decisions. In most cases, it only works to part ways with an underperforming head coach when the contract buyout is palatable. Sometimes a university has to wait for the terms to get far enough along to where it can afford to terminate a contract early.
USA TODAY shared contract details of head football coaches of public universities, and included with those were the current contract buyouts. Based on that information, we thought it’d be interesting to rank the Big Ten head coaches and how much each contract buyout is. We are of course interested in Ryan Day, but it’s also important to see where he compares with other coaches in the league.
So here are all fourteen head coaches in the Big Ten ranked by contract buyouts. All figures are as of 12/01/2021.