The “college football is in crisis!” crowd is punching air this morning.
LSU has signed new coach Lane Kiffin to a seven-year, $91 million contract. And his $13 million annual pay is just the base rate.
Based on the full term sheet, obtained by Wilson Alexander of the New Orleans Advocate, Kiffin is guaranteed to become the highest-paid coach in college football, if he wins a national championship. (Georgia’s Kirby Smart is currently the college football cash king, at $13.8 million.) Also, LSU will pay the playoff bonuses he would have earned at Mississippi, based on how Ole Miss performs in the College Football Playoff.
If fired without cause, Kiffin gets 80 percent of the unpaid balance — without any offsets based on subsequent employment.
Coupled with the $54 million buyout that will be paid to former coach Brian Kelly (an amount LSU tried unsuccessfully to get Kelly to reduce, both by dragging their feet over firing him and suggesting he could be fired “for cause”), that’s a $145 million commitment, minus the 20-percent potential buyout savings if/when LSU decides Lane is in fact lame.
It’s unclear whether there’s a fake Louisiana accent bonus in Kiffin’s contract. We’ll find out soon enough, when he makes his inevitable first appearance at an LSU basketball game.
