LSU has found itself in yet another head coaching search while paying a coach’s buyout just four years later.
With coach Ed Orgeron being fired in October 2021, LSU would pay him a sum of $16.8 million dollars over four years. It’s still paying Orgeron until the end of this year.
LSU would then turn around in November 2021 and hire Brian Kelly to a 10-year, $95 million contract.
And four years later, LSU is looking at having to pay another buyout, but this time it’s $54 million to be paid over the next five years.
Kelly and LSU are currently having negotiation talks over the amount and structure of the payout, with speculation that the amount will be lowered due to breaking the “moral code” in his contract.
LSU will finish paying Orgeron in December, but now it has to think about also paying Kelly’s buyout and paying for whoever the new coach will be.
Depending on negotiation results on Kelly’s buyout terms, LSU could spend about $71 million in dead money over 10 years.
How exactly did LSU get in this cycle of hire, fire then pay?
It simply comes down to the standard for LSU football.
Orgeron was fired after going 35-19 in five seasons. He’s famously known for leading the 2019 National Championship team, but also went 11-12 in the two seasons after winning the title, during and in the aftermath of COVID-19.
Orgeron would be fired two seasons after assembling what many regard as the best college football team ever.
A national championship-winning coach who then struggled for two seasons and was fired afterward shows that the standard is extremely high. It doesn’t just stop there; three of the last four coaches won national championships and SEC championships within their first four seasons at LSU, two things Kelly couldn’t achieve.
Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart, who spent a season at LSU as the defensive backs coach in 2004, is also familiar with the program’s high standard.
“I know it’s high expectations. I coached at LSU. A guy once told me, ‘that office you’re in, that’s not your office, you are borrowing it,” Smart said in a press conference on Monday. “And I knew right then, if you didn’t win, you wouldn’t be there long.”
Kelly would go 34-14 in three and a half seasons with a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and an SEC championship appearance.
But Kelly knew the stakes when he said this during his introductory press conference at LSU.
“I’m not gonna be judged on year one. I’m not gonna be judged on year two. I’m not gonna be judged on year three. Judge me on year four.”
Year four has arrived, and with three losses in mid-October, he was judged and sentenced.
Now LSU’s athletic department has to turn its focus to make their next hire.
If LSU makes the right hire, it could land the coach who can bring the program back to sustained, dynasty-level success and money doesn’t matter. But if LSU makes another miss, another million-dollar contract with an obscene buyout might just stare it right in the face again.
