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First College Football Coach to Leave: SEC Edition

Alex Kilpatrick

by Alex Kilpatrick in College Football

Updated Apr 9, 2020 · 12:51 PM PDT

Ed Orgeron: First SEC head coach to be fired?
Ed Orgeron has had an eventful career, and now he's the SEC coach favored to leave his position. Photo by Neon Tommy [CC License]
  • We offer a breakdown of the odds each SEC head coach is the first to leave his post
  • Should Barry Odom put his real estate agent on speed dial?
  • Ed Orgeron’s buyout is HOW much?

The old maxim in coaching is that you never talk about another man’s job. Fortunately, I’m not a college football coach, so we’re going to talk about the best-paid and least secure amateur athletics coaches in the world, and examine the odds that they end up taking an analyst job at Alabama. Who’s the first head coach to leave?

Odds on First Head Coach to Leave Post: SEC

This used to just be First Head Coach to Leave, but with everything that’s going on over at Ohio State, sportsbooks have decided to limit this bet to the most normal conference in the country: the SEC.

Coach Odds to be First
Ed Orgeron (LSU) +225
Barry Odom (Missouri) +250
Derek Mason (Vanderbilt) +500
Matt Luke (Ole Miss) +600
Mark Stoops (Kentucky) +700
Gus Malzahn (Auburn) +2000
Will Muschamp (South Carolina) +2000
Jeremy Pruitt (Tennessee) +2000
Joe Moorehead (Mississippi State) +3300
Chad Morris (Arkansas) +3300
Dan Mullen (Florida) +5000
Nick Saban (Alabama) +5000
Kirby Smart (Georgia) +5000
Jimbo Fisher (Texas A&M) +5000

I admit, I laughed a little when I saw that Saban has odds to leave Alabama, when he just signed a huge contract, but there’s always a chance he is made Governor and has to forfeit his position on the football team.

The Particulars, Or: Why Jimbo Fisher Should Be Looking Over His Shoulder

As with any wonky futures bet, it’s all about the terms.

The terms sportsbooks have set in place are as follows:

  • It’s first to “Leave Post,” not “Get Fired”
  • Bets are refunded if all SEC coaches remain in place on December 1st
  • No exception for death

The first thing is important, because there’s a lot of ways for a coach to leave their post. They could retire preseason to hand the reigns over to a promising assistant, like Bob Stoops; they could take another job somewhere else in the conference, like Dan Mullen; or they could just walk away, like Steve Spurrier. The bettor has to contend with all these possibilities, although firing is bar far the most likely.

The second thing isn’t really relevant, not with Urban Meyer becoming available soon. Someone’s gonna go, and it’s going to be soon.

The third is fairly important. We’re talking about old men with high-stress jobs and poor diets. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Do the math.

We’re talking about old men with high-stress jobs and poor diets. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Do the math.

Sportsbooks usually put the “death is a push” terms in these bets because it’s very unseemly (although not illegal) to bet on or incentivize someone’s death, and also they don’t want to have to pay that out when Donald Trump kicks the bucket. Since  sportsbooks have a $1,000 limit on futures bets, you could bet that amount on Jimbo Fisher, kill him, and try to collect a $51,000 payout.* You can also re-bet every 61 seconds, multiplying your payout to sportsbooks’ maximum payout of $150,000!

Two reasons this is a bad idea: Sportsbooks will probably void your bet if you do this, and $150,000 doesn’t seem like enough money. You’re not going to have any recourse if they do decide to void your bet, except maybe in a Panamanian court. Good luck with that! You’ll also make an enemy of every Texas A&M fan, and they all have guns.

Sportsbooks rules are dumb!

*Our lawyer would probably take some kind of exception to publishing this, but he just had a baby and isn’t in the office right now.

It’s All About the Buyout

It’s tough to get all the particulars about head coach salaries and buyouts, but we can be mostly sure of the following:

  • Jimbo Fisher has a fully guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract that has not yet been signed.
  • Nick Saban just signed an eight year, $74 million with a presumably massive buyout
  • Gus Malzahn has a $7 million buyout with Auburn
  • LSU head coach Ed Orgeron’s buyout is somewhere between $5 million and $8 million, all while LSU is still paying out Les Miles

For those coaches, there’s a strong financial barrier to being fired for football reasons. If Ed Orgeron does something egregious, he can be fired for cause, but “losing to LA Tech” doesn’t count as egregious.

Here are the coaches on the other side of the coin:

  • Barry Odom’s buyout at Missouri is only about $2.25 million
  • Derek Mason’s contract with Vanderbilt isn’t publicly available, but isn’t rumoured to be huge
  • Mark Stoops’ buyout is roughly $4 million, and Kentucky has a big athletic budget

Of these, Mark Stoops is the lowest on the odds sheet, at +700.

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