Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson famously warned mammas to not let their babies grow up to be cowboys. The country music stars might have encouraged them to be fired college coaches instead.
According to an ESPN analysis of financial records of athletics departments at public universities, FBS programs spent more than $533.6 million in dead money in an 11-year period from Jan. 1, 2010, to Jan. 31, 2021. That’s money those programs owed coaches in football and men’s and women’s basketball who were fired without cause with time left on their contracts. The severance payments were made over several years or, in a few cases, in one lump sum.
Remarkably, the dead money total is actually much more than that. The financial records did not include payments for many of the coaches who were fired during or after the 2020 football and 2020-21 basketball seasons. In football alone, FBS schools committed another $107.6 million in severance pay before mitigation to fired coaches and their staffs in 2020.
Coaches who received more than $1 million
$1.4M
Nebraska paid the most dead money in women’s hoops
$5.4M
Dead money payouts to strength & conditioning coaches
$471M
Total Power 5 dead money found
