The head coach of the University of Florida’s football team, Billy Napier, got fired on Sunday after a 3-4 start to the season.
He joins a number of other coaches who have been fired mid-season, such as James Franklin at Penn State, Sam Pittman at Arkansas, and Brent Pry at Virginia Tech.
The thing that stands out in the cases of Billy Napier and James Franklin specifically is the price of their contract buyouts. Franklin’s was a staggering $50 million while Napier’s was still an extreme at $21 million.
So why did these coaches get fired and are these buyouts warranted?
James Franklin had been the coach of Penn State for 12 years and had just come off of his best season, making it to the college football playoffs semifinal. Most years his teams were contenders, but Franklin was known for his teams’ poor performance in big games.
At Penn State he had a record of 4-21 against top 10 ranked teams. This was never bad enough for him to get fired – until he started this season 3-3, including losses in two games where Penn State was a 20-point favorite.
The firing in Franklin’s case was necessary because his teams were never truly contenders. He was good at being above average, but he did not win when it mattered.
The implications of the firing are probably more on the recruiting at Penn State than the financial aspect. After the firing, many high profile recruits who had been recruited by Franklin, such as the number one running back in the class of 2027, decommitted from the school.
Compared to Franklin, Napier had very little success as a coach at Florida. Napier was 22-23 as the head coach there, which is the worst record at the school in the last 75 years.
Part of the reason he got fired was that he was brought in to change Florida’s culture back to what it was when Tim Tebow was quarterback and they were winning national championships.
Instead, they lost even more than they did before he was the coach. Also, Florida’s star quarterback is playing worse this year than he did last year, in his freshman season.
The only surprise about the firing of Napier is that it came after a win, as Florida beat Mississippi State 23-21 on Saturday. But firing Napier was the right choice, because Florida should not be looking to barely beat Mississippi State, which is usually one of the worst teams in the SEC.
With the number of recruits Florida gets and the amount of talent they have, they should be trying to win the SEC every year. That was not going to happen with Napier as coach.
In terms of the $21 million buyout, fans can look back at the firing of Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M. In 2023 he was fired and A&M paid a $76 million buyout.
Today, Texas A&M is the number three team in the nation with a 7-0 record, the number one team in the SEC. Their current head coach also has a $21 million buyout. So obviously they have enough money to spend. Their program did not suffer because of that coaching change. Instead, they got better.
Other college football programs have even larger buyouts set in contracts, with the biggest belonging to Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart, who has a $118 million buyout.
Looking at what happened at Texas A&M and what other schools’ buyouts for coaches are, it sure looks like Penn State and Florida will be okay with their decisions.
If all of the colleges have these expensive buyouts of coaches, then they must all have enough money to pay the buyouts. These Power Four schools make enough money and their donors contribute enough money so they can pay these buyouts.
The only hard part for Florida and Penn State now is to find the right coach to rebuild their programs and become contenders again.
