5 Years $21.33M

[andrew]

Put the clause in to weed out. If the difference between a guy coming here and going somewhere else is really JUST that, then maybe only for that candidate. It will never be just that. Never. And again, if the coach is worried about that clause it should be a huge red flag.

If someone has two options:

1) Take a job and if you do okay for a few years you'll be set for life
2) Take a job and you'll be set for life as soon as you sign the contract

I think most people are going to take the second one even if the first one has a better chance of being successful in terms of winning.

It's really tough to turn down a guarantee of being rich for a chance at being rich, no matter how much you believe in yourself.

 

[BuzzinWreck78]

or we could just wait until the next loss when the offer will be off the table again.
altho i hope our next HC is successful and lasts a while, if we do have to fire the next HC in year 2,3 or 4
then i hope we continue our great new tradition of simultaneously firing the bozo who hired him.....

 

[GTCrew]

or we could just wait until the next loss when the offer will be off the table again.
altho i hope our next HC is successful and lasts a while, if we do have to fire the next HC in year 2,3 or 4
then i hope we continue our great new tradition of simultaneously firing the bozo who hired him.....

Yes, we need nostradamus as the AD.

Hiring a coach that fails is not and cannot be a "firing level" offense. Ridiculously overpaying for a failure is a firing level offense. Key has no chance of getting the AD fired unless the AD puts another bankrupting contract out there on a guy that does not have other offers. Honestly a quick, cheap failure is almost a success, if this is like any other business. Not every coach is successful. Many "can't miss" coaches actually can. With the portal changes, the most successful not blueblood schools are going to be the ones that are able to "take risks" on young promising coaches on the cheap.

 

[BuzzinWreck78]

Yes, we need nostradamus as the AD.

Hiring a coach that fails is not and cannot be a "firing level" offense. Ridiculously overpaying for a failure is a firing level offense. Key has no chance of getting the AD fired unless the AD puts another bankrupting contract out there on a guy that does not have other offers. Honestly a quick, cheap failure is almost a success, if this is like any other business. Not every coach is successful. Many "can't miss" coaches actually can. With the portal changes, the most successful not blueblood schools are going to be the ones that are able to "take risks" on young promising coaches on the cheap.

wow, you certainly have big goals for the program.

 

[aeromech]

wow, you certainly have big goals for the program.

I think he is saying we don't want to Texas A&M ourselves like we sort of did with Geoff Collins. Let's not find ourselves in another "can't afford t fire him" scenario.

 

[ElCidBUZZingFAN]

FWIW, Dabo was paid $800k in his first contract at Clemson. Even after he started winning and got his first “big” contract, he was only making ~2M, good for 39th highest in the country, while his assistants were the #1 highest paid nationwide.

Holy öööö. That's incredible.

I'm more convinced @GTCrew is right and Key needs to be sold on accepting such similar terms. I'd rather this sort of setup than market contract for HC and sub market for assistants.

This is the way.

 

[THWUGA]

Hiring a coach that fails is not and cannot be a "firing level" offense. Ridiculously overpaying for a failure is a firing level offense. Key has no chance of getting the AD fired unless the AD puts another bankrupting contract out there on a guy that does not have other offers.

I agree with you in concept. But I don't think the VAST majority of our fans know what competitive compensation is in 2022 for a head football coach.

I hate to use clown as an example here because he's not the point, but it's something that everyone is familiar with. Clown's contract was $23.1MM over 7 years, for an average of $3.3MM/year. His current year was $3.4MM.

In the current year, that ranked him tied for 61st highest paid football coach. Sixty. First.

Note - there are only 65 power 5 programs. Some group of 5 teams are above us, but let's all be honest about one fact here -- Ranking 61st in head coach compensation is bottom of the P5 barrel.

Let's say TStans was lying outright, and we could have gotten someone to come here for a 5 year contract but we needed to pay an average of $3.8MM/year... half a million more a year. That moves our compensation up to.... wait for it.... 57th!

Collins sucked but I'm sick of hearing about his contract.

So what exactly does our fanbase want to pay a head coach? Because I've seen some batshit crazy off-the-wall posts about coaching compensation from our "intelligent" fanbase. Like people who think an contract based 75% on incentives is something we should insist on. Stuff that's I guess fun to post about on a message board but is about as realistic as Tech winning the next 5 national championships in a row.

Don't want to pay that just because you think the market for football coaches is too much? Prefer to live in an alternate reality where a good coach would take some weird contract structure that doesn't exist? Think you can find that one-out-a-hundred coach that is the next big thing but the entire college football world doesn't know it yet so you can pay him at a 50% discount? Great, pay someone less and get less results.

Expect to be ranked in the top 25 every year? Great, then pay a top-40 salary, which means $5MM+, which means likely $5.5MM+ in 2023, which means likely $6MM over a 5-year contract.

 

[andrew]

FWIW, Dabo was paid $800k in his first contract at Clemson. Even after he started winning and got his first “big” contract, he was only making ~2M, good for 39th highest in the country, while his assistants were the #1 highest paid nationwide.

Holy öööö. That's incredible.

I'm more convinced @GTCrew is right and Key needs to be sold on accepting such similar terms. I'd rather this sort of setup than market contract for HC and sub market for assistants.

This is the way.

Swinney's first contract was heavily incentive based. Base was lowest in the ACC, but if he made it to the ACC title game it would trigger an automatic raise that would put him in the top half of the conference.

This is the exact type of contract I'm in favor of for Key (assuming he does well the next two games.) I also think it only works for a situation where there's an unproven interim HC who looked good but is completely unproven, as Dabo was and Key is -- no established coach would take this.

The five-year contract guarantees at least $800,000 each season – $250,000 in base pay and $550,000 for outside things such as hosting camps and speaking engagements. That is the lowest of any football coach in the ACC.

Swinney’s salary would almost double if he leads the Tigers to an ACC title game, and that can increase as well based on the contract’s wording, which guarantees a raise to the median level of all ACC head coaches. That was roughly $1.6 million last year.

That means he would get about $2 million, which works out as the average of the top seven ACC coaches.

Swinney can get as much as $500,000 in performance and academic incentives per season, which includes $200,000 for a national championship while meeting academic benchmarks. In addition, he can take home up to $150,000 for national coach of the year recognition, and $75,000 for a BCS Bowl appearance.

Source: https://greenvillejournal.com/community/swinney-signs-the-dotted-line/

 

[GaTech'06]

Assuming Coach Key wins the next two and he gets a "prove it" contract at $1.5 - $2M/year how many years do you lock in for? I would think a 2 year contract get's it done while not being insulting. Agents started this rumor that coaches need 4 years for recruiting. I don't buy it. In the age of the transfer portal I think kids are smart enough to know their coach may or may not see them cross the stage at graduation.

 

[andrew]

Assuming Coach Key wins the next two and he gets a "prove it" contract at $1.5 - $2M/year how many years do you lock in for? I would think a 2 year contract get's it done while not being insulting. Agents started this rumor that coaches need 4 years for recruiting. I don't buy it. In the age of the transfer portal I think kids are smart enough to know their coach may or may not see them cross the stage at graduation.

Zero chance it will be for fewer than four years. I don't know who started the four years thing but it's certainly standard now, and I doubt any coach in the past decade has been given a starting contract of fewer than four years.

The way you prevent yourself from being locked in is by giving a decreasing buyout -- you don't give the coach a two year contract, you give him a four year contract with an out for $500k after two seasons or something. Or not, if you're Todd Stansbury.

 

[GTLiebs]

I agree with you in concept. But I don't think the VAST majority of our fans know what competitive compensation is in 2022 for a head football coach.

I hate to use clown as an example here because he's not the point, but it's something that everyone is familiar with. Clown's contract was $23.1MM over 7 years, for an average of $3.3MM/year. His current year was $3.4MM.

In the current year, that ranked him tied for 61st highest paid football coach. Sixty. First.

Note - there are only 65 power 5 programs. Some group of 5 teams are above us, but let's all be honest about one fact here -- Ranking 61st in head coach compensation is bottom of the P5 barrel.

Let's say TStans was lying outright, and we could have gotten someone to come here for a 5 year contract but we needed to pay an average of $3.8MM/year... half a million more a year. That moves our compensation up to.... wait for it.... 57th!

Collins sucked but I'm sick of hearing about his contract.

So what exactly does our fanbase want to pay a head coach? Because I've seen some batshit crazy off-the-wall posts about coaching compensation from our "intelligent" fanbase. Like people who think an contract based 75% on incentives is something we should insist on. Stuff that's I guess fun to post about on a message board but is about as realistic as Tech winning the next 5 national championships in a row.

Don't want to pay that just because you think the market for football coaches is too much? Prefer to live in an alternate reality where a good coach would take some weird contract structure that doesn't exist? Think you can find that one-out-a-hundred coach that is the next big thing but the entire college football world doesn't know it yet so you can pay him at a 50% discount? Great, pay someone less and get less results.

Expect to be ranked in the top 25 every year? Great, then pay a top-40 salary, which means $5MM+, which means likely $5.5MM+ in 2023, which means likely $6MM over a 5-year contract.

We wouldn't be giving someone like Key a low contract expecting him to make a ranked team. We'd be giving him that contact so we can save up for a top 40 salary for the next staff. If Key pulls it off anyway, great he can get that contact. If not then we move on to paying that kind of money.

You talk about how low the previous contract was ranked, but unless some booster is ponying up a lot of cash we are in a tighter financial situation for this contract than we were for Collins.

If key won't do it for a discounted price and says he'd only accept for what we'd pay another coach, then we say cya and give that sort of money to a coach that can justify it.

 

[THWUGA]

We wouldn't be giving someone like Key a low contract expecting him to make a ranked team. We'd be giving him that contact so we can save up for a top 40 salary for the next staff. If Key pulls it off anyway, great he can get that contact. If not then we move on to paying that kind of money.

You talk about how low the previous contract was ranked, but unless some booster is ponying up a lot of cash we are in a tighter financial situation for this contract than we were for Collins.

If key won't do it for a discounted price and says he'd only accept for what we'd pay another coach, then we say cya and give that sort of money to a coach that can justify it.

My point is, we just did that. Yeah, we picked the wrong guy. But again that's the whole point -- you're a lot more likely to pick the wrong guy at that comp level.

Your post is already buying into that -- we're saving for the next staff. How does make any sense? We're gonna hire the next guy to get us to the next guy? Do we not want to build the program?

This just isn't how any successful business is run.

 

[GTCrew]

I agree with you in concept. But I don't think the VAST majority of our fans know what competitive compensation is in 2022 for a head football coach.

I hate to use clown as an example here because he's not the point, but it's something that everyone is familiar with. Clown's contract was $23.1MM over 7 years, for an average of $3.3MM/year. His current year was $3.4MM.

In the current year, that ranked him tied for 61st highest paid football coach. Sixty. First.

Note - there are only 65 power 5 programs. Some group of 5 teams are above us, but let's all be honest about one fact here -- Ranking 61st in head coach compensation is bottom of the P5 barrel.

Let's say TStans was lying outright, and we could have gotten someone to come here for a 5 year contract but we needed to pay an average of $3.8MM/year... half a million more a year. That moves our compensation up to.... wait for it.... 57th!

Collins sucked but I'm sick of hearing about his contract.

So what exactly does our fanbase want to pay a head coach? Because I've seen some batshit crazy off-the-wall posts about coaching compensation from our "intelligent" fanbase. Like people who think an contract based 75% on incentives is something we should insist on. Stuff that's I guess fun to post about on a message board but is about as realistic as Tech winning the next 5 national championships in a row.

Don't want to pay that just because you think the market for football coaches is too much? Prefer to live in an alternate reality where a good coach would take some weird contract structure that doesn't exist? Think you can find that one-out-a-hundred coach that is the next big thing but the entire college football world doesn't know it yet so you can pay him at a 50% discount? Great, pay someone less and get less results.

Expect to be ranked in the top 25 every year? Great, then pay a top-40 salary, which means $5MM+, which means likely $5.5MM+ in 2023, which means likely $6MM over a 5-year contract.

Everything in this thinking is wrong. It starts with clown. Clown was a current D1 head coach. Key is an interim head coach. That distinction is massive.

Only if we are trying to hire away an existing D1 head coach does the salaries of D1 head coaches matter. I dont know why that boggles your mind.

Then you act like coaching is a shopping trip where I go in the car dealer and they say "how much do you want to pay for an SUV" and if I pay 80k I get leather seats, V8, 4x4 and if I pay 30k I get a FWD 4 banger with hubcaps and cloth seats.

The conclusion takes the cake though, where if I want a top 25 team I just need to buy a top 25 coach, as if there is a correlation between salary and success for first or second year D1 coaches. THERE IS NOT. Any correlation between ranking and coach salary comes after the coach proves himself successful in D1. In the chicken/egg here, the top salary comes AFTER the high ranking. We can pay Key top 40 salary AFTER he proves he is a top 40 coach.

This understanding that salary and quality for coaches without sustained success has little correlation should sink in for you when I say:

Key makes less than 1/3rd of what Collins made, and he is obviously better. Collins made about average but was one of the very worst in D1. No correlation. More importantly, If we triple Key's salary this week, will it make us more likely to win any of the next three games? Of course not.

Because even if there was a correlation between salary and quality on a macro level, on the individual level Key is a fixed quality regardless of what we pay him. 600k, 6 mill, he is the same guy.

That should tell you to ignore the macro. It is irrelevant. The price of anything is not really what it is worth, it is what someone will pay for it. Key is like going to a real estate auction and you see a beach house you like. It is quickly clear nobody else is bidding on the beach house at this auction. What do you bid?

Do you offer below the reserve, say 600k?
Do you meet the owner at the reserve price or slightly above, say 1.5M?
Do you offer the market rate of $3M that other people paid for houses on the same beach?

 

[johncu]

Swinney's first contract was heavily incentive based. Base was lowest in the ACC, but if he made it to the ACC title game it would trigger an automatic raise that would put him in the top half of the conference.

This is the exact type of contract I'm in favor of for Key (assuming he does well the next two games.) I also think it only works for a situation where there's an unproven interim HC who looked good but is completely unproven, as Dabo was and Key is -- no established coach would take this.



Source: https://greenvillejournal.com/community/swinney-signs-the-dotted-line/

Lots of similarities to the two situations. Things were not good at all at the end of the Bowden tenure. He had lost the team and things were not going to get better. Embarrassing losses, falling behind wrt closest rivals, and CJ Spiller was supposedly going to transfer to Florida. Dabo was largely unqualified, but the team was behind him and got a little boost when he took over as interim. The fans were mostly against the hire. The group I used to tailgate with actually swore off Clemson football altogether when they hired Dabo because “Clemson had given up trying to compete with FSU.” It wasn’t until about 2015 that they admitted they were wrong and came back.

Dabo’s contract made sense, given the very specific set of circumstances. I think Key’s circumstances are very similar, so he might be willing to bet on himself with a cheap, but inventive-laden contract, as Dabo did.

All that being said… I still think there are some good options out there. Better than during our last hiring cycle, for sure. I’d rather see us go for Chadwell, but it looks like Key will have his shot to earn the job.

 

[GTLiebs]

My point is, we just did that. Yeah, we picked the wrong guy. But again that's the whole point -- you're a lot more likely to pick the wrong guy at that comp level.

Your post is already buying into that -- we're saving for the next staff. How does make any sense? We're gonna hire the next guy to get us to the next guy? Do we not want to build the program?

This just isn't how any successful business is run.

The debate around this is the question of how much money we are actually able to spend. If we can't even afford a top 40 salary, $5M+ then what? The hypothetical we are debating here is do we go with a middle path, $3-3.5M coach who in your example would probably give mediocre results, or do we promote the interim at a cheap rate so that the $5M+ salary is achievable the next time around. Though as some others have suggested, you probably also do not try the cheap path with an outsider, only the promote from within.

 

[THWUGA]

Everything in this thinking is wrong. (snip)

You're taking this as me disagreeing with your post, but the first thing I posted is that I agree with what you're saying.

My point is that Tech fan's expectations for results do not align with their understanding of what is high compensation vs low compensation. I mentioned a lot of posts I see in these threads - including those above, specifically talking about comp structures that are 75%-plus incentives, hiring a coach for $1.5MM, truly insane, unrealistic stuff if you want a competitive program.

I never said pay the same coach a higher number and he'll be different person.

I never said top 25 pay gets top 25 results. I actually said if you want to be in the top 25, then expect top pay top 40 compensation. If you don't think those two are correlated, including with new hires, I'm not sure we can agree on much. This happens year after year.

Hires with higher floors and higher ceilings get a higher package. The more risky hires get a lower package. I didn't say they never work out -- this is about probability, and making the right risk-reward investment... I think I mentioned probability a few times.

Let's leave coach names out of it because it's not about a personal preference - my favorite, your favorite, it doesn't matter. We're throwing darts.

If we agree Coach A and Coach B have the same floor and ceiling, same fits for GT, etc etc. -- and Coach A costs $4MM and Coach B costs $3.5MM, then we should hire Coach B right? Best value. This is easy.

If Coach A has a higher floor and ceiling than Coach B, but Coach A is $4MM and Coach B is $3.5MM, we should hire Coach A right? We can't guarantee results, so Coach A may still fail, but it's a relatively small difference, for what we think is a safer downside, higher upside pick. I'm guessing we agree on this too.

What if Coach C whispers that he's interested at $5.5MM. Coach C has a demonstrated head coaching track record, he's got maybe just a slightly higher floor than Coach A, but no ceiling on what he *might* be able to do. Splashy hire, headline guy, season ticket attention getter, corporate partner endorsement type, etc. Do you hire this guy at $1.5MM more?

Maybe I say yes, maybe I say no but plow the $1.5MM into assistant and analyst comp. But it's not a crazy decision either way. There's a lot on here that would say that's insane, that's ridiculous, etc. The point is that even if we said yes and pulled the trigger on $5.5MM, THAT WOULD ONLY BE THE 30th-HIGHEST PAID COACH IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL THIS YEAR.

And that context is missed in almost every conversation here regarding hires and Collins' contract.

 

[THWUGA]

The debate around this is the question of how much money we are actually able to spend. If we can't even afford a top 40 salary, $5M+ then what? The hypothetical we are debating here is do we go with a middle path, $3-3.5M coach who in your example would probably give mediocre results, or do we promote the interim at a cheap rate so that the $5M+ salary is achievable the next time around. Though as some others have suggested, you probably also do not try the cheap path with an outsider, only the promote from within.

The typical debate on this is that Collins' contract sucked. My point is that *maybe* the contract could have been 5 years instead of 7, but it would have needed to be $3.8-4MM, which means it was off in total value by what, $4MM? Who cares. The problem was that Collins was an abortion, not that he was getting $3.3MM/year -- he ranked at the very very bottom of power 5, and we got very very bottom results.

If we want better results, expect to pay more. Acting like we can identify coaching talent better than everyone else and therefore save money and get the same results is a strategy with a very low probability of being successful.

 

[GTLiebs]

The typical debate on this is that Collins' contract sucked. My point is that *maybe* the contract could have been 5 years instead of 7, but it would have needed to be $3.8-4MM, which means it was off in total value by what, $4MM? Who cares. The problem was that Collins was an abortion, not that he was getting $3.3MM/year -- he ranked at the very very bottom of power 5, and we got very very bottom results.

If we want better results, expect to pay more. Acting like we can identify coaching talent better than everyone else and therefore save money and get the same results is a strategy with a very low probability of being successful.

I'm not even talking about the Collins contract in that sense, just using it as a point of reference compared to other coaches on the numbers you quoted.

My point isn't really that taking Key on a cheaper contract is identifying talent better or even that it will be successful. It's that if we can't afford what it takes for real success now, take a cheap option that would be possibly palatable by the fanbase and allow you to reach for that success a bit later. Or we can grab a 50-60th place salary coach for a 50th place kind of finish for the foreseeable future.

Remember this is under the idea we can't actually afford a $5M+ coach right now, which from what I've seen and heard is likely the case. From your earlier statement, paying $4M for a coach and expecting top results is also acting like we are identifying coaching talent better, just more expensive and potentially upgrading some bad years to mediocre years (or not, as Collins showed).

 

[StraightFresh]

I agree with you in concept. But I don't think the VAST majority of our fans know what competitive compensation is in 2022 for a head football coach.

I hate to use clown as an example here because he's not the point, but it's something that everyone is familiar with. Clown's contract was $23.1MM over 7 years, for an average of $3.3MM/year. His current year was $3.4MM.

In the current year, that ranked him tied for 61st highest paid football coach. Sixty. First.

Note - there are only 65 power 5 programs. Some group of 5 teams are above us, but let's all be honest about one fact here -- Ranking 61st in head coach compensation is bottom of the P5 barrel.

Let's say TStans was lying outright, and we could have gotten someone to come here for a 5 year contract but we needed to pay an average of $3.8MM/year... half a million more a year. That moves our compensation up to.... wait for it.... 57th!

Collins sucked but I'm sick of hearing about his contract.

So what exactly does our fanbase want to pay a head coach? Because I've seen some batshit crazy off-the-wall posts about coaching compensation from our "intelligent" fanbase. Like people who think an contract based 75% on incentives is something we should insist on. Stuff that's I guess fun to post about on a message board but is about as realistic as Tech winning the next 5 national championships in a row.

Don't want to pay that just because you think the market for football coaches is too much? Prefer to live in an alternate reality where a good coach would take some weird contract structure that doesn't exist? Think you can find that one-out-a-hundred coach that is the next big thing but the entire college football world doesn't know it yet so you can pay him at a 50% discount? Great, pay someone less and get less results.

Expect to be ranked in the top 25 every year? Great, then pay a top-40 salary, which means $5MM+, which means likely $5.5MM+ in 2023, which means likely $6MM over a 5-year contract.

GT football fans tend to be goofy, to put it generously. I saw some posts recently about how we should just poach Mel Tucker or Bret Bielema. Yeah...we're poaching $6-10M coaches being paid by billionaires and TV contracts worth $25 M per year more than we're getting from the ACC...there's a delusional streak running through the last remaining GT fans who post on message boards

 

[GTCrew]

The typical debate on this is that Collins' contract sucked. My point is that *maybe* the contract could have been 5 years instead of 7, but it would have needed to be $3.8-4MM, which means it was off in total value by what, $4MM? Who cares. The problem was that Collins was an abortion, not that he was getting $3.3MM/year -- he ranked at the very very bottom of power 5, and we got very very bottom results.

If we want better results, expect to pay more. Acting like we can identify coaching talent better than everyone else and therefore save money and get the same results is a strategy with a very low probability of being successful.

Nobody can identify which unproven coaches will be successful. NOBODY. Auburn cant even identify which proven coaches will be successful. And we are not in the market for a proven coach.

Perhaps an analogy is QBs. On paper a 4 star QB is better than a 3 star QB and a coordinator that gets hired as HC for 4 million people are going to think is better than the coordinator that gets hired for 3 million.

But do you really think the million indicates the 4 guy is better than the 3 guy? If you do then we can agree to disagree and move on.

Every great HC was making low six figures as a position coach at some point and almost certainly not being paid what they were worth. The team that first promoted them to coordinator did not immediately pay them proven coordinator money. The only place that ridiculousness happens is at the HC level and there is no reason for it. Imho.

The part we disagree about the most probably is the idea that something is impossible because nobody else does it. (Like huge incentive contracts with low pay) Everything about the modern pay and contract structure is based around a model where coaches could leave at any time but players were basically stuck. And where 100% of the discretionary money goes to coaches and zero goes to players. And you had to spend basically all the money on just nine (iirc) coaches too.

None of that is true now. Innovators will emerge from the non-factory programs just like what happened in baseball with moneyball. Someone is going to try hiring a cheap staff but moving booster money to NIL to buy a better team. Somebody is going to hire a cheap staff but spend the savings on having a massive staff of dedicated consulting coaches for each opponent. Or for each player, all the while being on the very edge of the rules. Somebody is going to develop an AI at the level chess programs are now. Playing the game straight up when UGA has what, 4x the money at every level, is never ever going to be successful.