Urban Meyer admits to being wrong about NIL preventing coaches from getting fired

Earlier this season, College Football Hall of Famer Urban Meyer stated that he believed that “the era of buyouts and new facilities going up every three or four years are gone.” This, however, could not have been farther from the truth.

Just nine weeks into the college football season, powerhouse Power Four programs such as Penn State (James Franklin) and Florida (Billy Napier) have departed with their coaches in situations dealing with massive buyouts. Meyer discussed how his prediction did not come true on the latest edition of ‘The Triple Option‘ podcast.

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Meyer admits he was wrong about buyouts

“I apologized to Mark Ingram publicly here because I was wrong,” Meyer said. “Mark, you were right. I said that. The one advantage I probably have over a lot of people is that I sat in a lot of those budget meetings for years and years. In some places, like at Ohio State, we had some budget meetings but I let someone else handle that. They’d meet with me and talk about budgets. But in the last year, I’ve had conversations with people and I’ve also talked to a couple of coaches that were fired. Here’s the point, is that the physical responsibility of a University administration at some point has checks and balances.”

“I don’t know if there are deep endowments that somehow have a hold of, but I was told verbatim that there was no money at this particular school or schools. I even asked a couple of guys, because I had a theory that the residual money left over from these TV contracts went to coaches’ salaries and facilities. They said that the days of monstrous facilities are over and the days of buyouts are over. I shared that with you guys and our audiences but I was wrong because there seems to be a waterfall of coaches getting released with big numbers behind it.”

House Settlement has not impacted coaching buyouts

Earlier this season, Meyer revealed that changes to NIL (stemming from the House Settlement) would change how programs used their money. Instead of caving to massive buyouts of coaches, he believed that they would use this money to pay players and build new facilities. However, this has all been occurring and just signaled that programs will not hesitate to part ways with a coach if the situation reaches a breaking point.

“There are only so many — it’s a finite number. Money,” Meyer said in September. “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.

“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.”