Why Do Fired College Coaches Still Make Millions?

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dead money: it’s the money a college or university still owes a coach after they’re fired. And over the past decade, there has been more than half a billion dollars worth of it paid out in college sports. But where does that money come from, and which schools are the biggest offenders? ESPN investigative reporter Paula Lavigne looked into the outsized spending of dead money across college programs, and explains what’s behind it. Hear the findings from Lavigne’s and Mark Schlabach’s reporting on buyouts for coaches in college football, and men's and women's basketball Power 5 programs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	ESPN Daily is presented by supercuts, the smarter, easier way to get a haircut.
0:06.9	It's not just any haircut.
0:08.8	It's super cuts.
0:13.7	I met with Coach Rodriguez this morning and informed him of my decision to relieve him of his responsibilities.
0:20.5	Didn't win a football game. You take that time and you get fired and you kind of my decision to relieve him of his responsibilities. Then winning a football game.
0:21.5	You take that time and you get fired and you kind of just sit back and just wrote down what
0:26.4	could I have done differently.
0:27.5	Every December there's this conversation about getting rid of Gus Malazahn.
0:31.8	The difference this time is it was expensive.
0:33.6	It's going to cost Auburn a mere $21.5 million to pay him up.
0:39.3	Some kids grow up wanting to be astronauts. Others dream of being like marine biologists.
0:47.3	But you know what? Kids are stupid. The job every child should be aspiring to is fired college football coach.
0:59.0	Because long after you've been relieved from your job on the sidelines, the checks just keep
1:05.0	rolling in.
1:06.7	It's called dead money.
1:08.6	And there's more than half a billion dollars of it over the last decade alone.
1:13.6	So today, investigative reporter Paula Levine unearths just how much schools are paying coaches not to work,
1:21.5	who is really footing the bill.
1:23.9	And what this all says about the dream of college sports.
1:29.1	I'm Pablo Torre. It's Tuesday, November 16th.
1:33.8	This is ESPN Daily. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn.
1:48.4	Hiring for your small business.
	...

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