Urban Meyer predicts buyout era in college football to slow down

The college football season is going into Week 3, and, already, the hot seat is boiling over. Despite those tensions about some coaching situations around the country, former head coach Urban Meyer thinks that how coaching contracts are being handled is changing. In particular, the willingness to play buyouts and actually make coaching changes.

Meyer looked at the Florida situation, in particular. There, Gators head coach Billy Napier is sitting on the hot seat. However, as Meyer explained on The Triple Option, he’s an example of a coach who could get more time due to a new unwillingness to pay the buyout.

“This is a fiscal conversation, not a personal conversation,” Urban Meyer said. “It breaks my heart about Florida because I’m attached to Florida. I don’t know Coach Napier well, but I’ve lived there, and I know they’ve just not had what they want. So, once again, it’s not directed at the person, it’s directed at fiscal. Actually, Colin Cowherd brought this up to me. We were talking one day on air on The Herd, and he said, and I’ve done some research on this, he said that you’re going to see the end of the big buyouts. People are going to stick with coaches longer.”

These fiscal changes stem from NIL and the House Settlement. In essence, money coming into programs needs to be spent differently now. So, spending millions of dollars to move on from a coaching staff and hire a new one is now less practical. That money needs to go to the roster. It’s also a change that goes beyond buyouts and is changing the entire budget for programs.

“Then you start thinking fiscally. You’re going to start seeing these big, monstrous facilities. I think it’s going to slow down a little bit. I know Ohio State had it on the books to redo the whole — they’re on hold. The national champions are on hold,” Meyer said.

“And that’s why. There are only so many — it’s a finite number. Money. It used to be kind of infinite because of television contracts. Your labor or your players were getting nothing. Then what would you do? They’d pay the coaches an astronomical amount of money, and then with all these millions left, they’d go build these locker rooms. So, I think the era of buyouts and the era of new facilities going up every three or four years are gone. Now, that money is going to whom? And I’m not saying it’s wrong, but that’s where it’s going. It’s going to the players.”

Billy Napier is now 20-20 during his time at Florida and coming off a bad loss at home to USF. However, his buyout is currently sitting at $20.4 million. That number drops to $13 million next season and $6.1 million the year after. That decrease in cost is standard in buyouts, as there is less contract still to be completed. So, using that as an example, it’s easy to see why teams might be willing to wait longer than they used to, giving coaches more opportunity to turn things around.

“So, when Colin said that to me, I kind of did some research,” Meyer said. “And it’s going to be interesting to see because you’re throwing around some big, and some not so big, but you’re throwing around some big buyouts, which I don’t know if teams — because at the end of the day, that money, where does it come from? You can’t say the school. That has to be a direct donor, but the donors are also supplying money as a form of the NIL. So, I think it’s very intriguing to watch what’s gonna happen.”

There are still going to be coaching changes around college football. However, for the time being, Urban Meyer is right. It’s going to be very intriguing to see how teams adjust to the House Settlement and their new budgetary constraints.