James Franklin Buyout More Proof College Football Coaching Contracts Are A Joke

Penn State just sent shock waves through the college football world by axing head coach James Franklin after over a decade of service.

If this comes as a surprise to you, you probably haven't been paying attention.

Yes, Franklin led the Nittany Lions to the College Football Playoff semifinals just last year, but his team sits at just 3-3 this season with embarrassing losses to Northwestern and UCLA on his ledger, and his glaring 4-21 record against AP top-ten teams was something that was never going to change.

Franklin showed everyone who he was long before the Pete Thamel tweet dropped on our collective timelines.

In that vein, perhaps the most shocking thing about this whole ordeal is just how high Franklin's buyout was at the time of his firing.

If you're wondering how a coach who has been at a proud program for so long with such a dismal record against similarly talented teams, you are not alone.

Towards the end of 2021, Franklin signed a massive 10-year, $85 million dollar contract extension.

But why were the Nittany Lions so eager to throw this type of money at their sitting head coach?

Up to that point, Franklin had one Big Ten championship to his name and was coming off a 7-6 record that season.

Who was busting down the door trying to poach a guy who had just lost to Arkansas in the Outback Bowl?

James Franklin's exorbitant extension and subsequent buyout is just the latest example in a long line of coaches with absolutely awful contracts.

Allow me to clarify: the contracts are GREAT for the coaches and their agents, but are particularly damning for pretty much everyone else involved.

There's the infamous example of Jimbo Fisher and his $76 million buyout at Texas A&M, which is still the most lucrative buyout in the history of college athletics by a healthy margin.

Then there is the curious case of Mark Stoops' buyout at Kentucky, a rumored $38 million that has hamstrung the university into keeping a subpar coach on the payroll.

That doesn't even get into schools like Florida and Florida State, who have underperforming coaches they refuse to rid themselves of because of their beefy, eight-figure buyouts (whether they have the money and refuse to pay it, though, is a different story).

The bottom line is this: college football coaching contracts are the biggest joke in the sport, and it's not even close.

Where else can you get paid tens of millions of dollars to be awful at your job?

I've been fired before, and the best I ever got was getting paid out until the end of the month.

Can you imagine if they promised to pay me my salary for the next five years if and when they gave me the boot?

Now apply that to egomaniacs making more money than most of us will see in five lifetimes, and you have your answer.

The sooner these universities and athletic directors snatch their balls back from coaches and their agents, the better.

James Franklin isn't the outlier, he's just the tip of the iceberg.

And if college football isn't careful, it could pull a Titanic and be sunk altogether by it.