Fire Bobby Petrino? The unusual purchase of a Louisville contract makes the job difficult

Bobby Petrino and Louisville have a bad year 2018.

The Cardinals did not adapt well to the post-Lamar Jackson rule, and they looked bad even when they won, which was not a lot. During Week 5 against Florida State, he made a very complicated call late in the game, winning an almost certain tied victory, then made himself destroyed at home by Georgia Tech.

Many Louisville fans have claimed that Petrino looked selfless during games and the electronic bulletin boards are full of theories that he is trying to get fired.

This is probably not true.

But this East It is true that Petrino's unusual contract could isolate him from the heat. He is well placed to get away, whether he is fired or not.

If Louisville fired Petrino during the 2018 season or just after, the school could owe him more than $ 14 million in redemption.

Petrino has signed a seven-year extension in 2016. He is under contract for the calendar year 2023. The redemption provisions in Petrino's contract – a copy of which SB Nation has reviewed the text – are complex, but we can summarize them .

If Louisville fires Petrino for no reason – that is, for losing too many games – he will have to pay his guaranteed money for the rest of the year. and three years later. (If Louisville dismissed him in the last three years, the school would only owe him what was left of him at the time.) Petrino's contract structure would make his takeover slightly larger if he was fired. in 2019, so that Louisville could not have reasons to wait.)

His contract also includes an annual payment of $ 500,000 when the Louisville Academic Progress Report score is over 935, and his team is above that mark, like almost all Division I programs.

Petrino's compensation for 2018, including the APR premium, is $ 4.475 million. If Louisville dismissed him on December 1, just after the season, he should:

• $ 4.025 million for 2019
• $ 4.075 million for 2020
• $ 4.125 million for 2021

It's $ 12.225 million.

But the school should still pay him the balance of his base salary of $ 3,975,000 for 2018 until the end of the calendar year. If Louisville fired him on December 1, 2018, he would give him a month's additional base salary for that year (about $ 331,000), in addition to all of the above. (His $ 500,000 APR payment is due in November, so he would have it before being fired in this case.)

The buyback would be about $ 12.6 million at the time, but because of the structure of the deal, it probably would not be all. The language also suggests that Petrino would probably have three more years on the $ 500,000 APR bonuses, even though he was not coaching. Unless Louisville challenges or fails to maintain its APR, the Petrino buyout would increase by $ 1.5 million, reaching approximately $ 14.1 million on December 1, 2018.

That's pretty much a top-15 buy, other numbers on USA Today's list from 2017. Buses with such large redemptions are not supposed to be fired at all.

It is not clear that Louisville can afford to pay Petrino and hire someone else to claim millions a year.

Louisville already pays a lot of people not to work.

• The sports director of the school, Tom Jurich, was fired amid an FBI investigation and agreed to pay him more than $ 7 million.
• The school sent basketball coach Rick Pitino back in the middle of the same investigation. Louisville has put Pitino in good standing for cause, but the latter does not agree with this decision and sued Louisville to try to recover $ 37 million.

The school could have asked Daddy John, a mega-donor, to help cover the Petrino buyout. But the school just took the name of the billionaire selling pizzas, which sells racism, off the stadium. This gooey, buttery fund could have dried up.

Petrino's deal is almost unbelievable, given his history.

Petrino is famous for his shenanigans (whose story has been the subject for more than ten years, the tracker Petrino Shenanigans), but the common thread is that he rarely stays around.

He would have left a job at Jaguars to go to Auburn in the early 2000s, without telling Tom Coughlin that he was leaving. He was interviewed for different jobs, without saying anything to people at his home. current jobs. He signed a 10-year contract in Louisville in 2006, departed for the Falcons six months later and left them less than a year after the mid-season. Arkansas fired him after a motorcycle accident on which he lied. He went to western Kentucky and left back in Louisville after a year. My head is spinning all that stuff.

It's strange that Louisville is making a financial commitment to a coach whose decisive attribute was the lack of commitment.

But this same story is also the explanation of the other parts of the agreement.

It seems that Petrino burned bridges when he left Louisville. Jurich, who was at the time AD, talked about cleaning up the damage of his former coach.

But when Charlie Strong left Louisville fit enough to wager with the good coach in 2014, the Cardinals jumped on their former leader.

At this point, Louisville had to convince his fans that Petrino was a safe bet. The Cardinals faced the same problem as anyone on their return with an ex: trying to convince their friends my ex has changed. You can trust them now.

The cardinals and Petrino therefore drafted the rare contract that provided for his own PR:

• Look how confident Louisville was in Petrino and made this huge financial commitment.
• Look how confident Petrino was at Jurich. The coach agreed to pay Louisville a huge buyout in case he leaves for another job – between $ 5.5 and $ 10 million due to school, depending on the time. Because the two men were betting on each other, that amount would go down by half if Jurich left. (This has happened.)

That's not the only thing the cardinals did for Petrino to prove the deal.

Most contracts have an income or external employment clause. Coaches usually have to ask their bosses if it is acceptable to accept another job. This is not supposed to be unreasonably withheld, but it has hardly ever been addressed (returning Jeff Jagodzinski for interviewing the BC Jets could be the most public exception.)

Petrino's contract, however, contains ultra-restrictive wording that could make it a breach of contract if he or his agent does something to try to find another job for the coach:

The employee agrees not to negotiate, personally or through an agent, nor to actively seek or accept any other employment, either full-time or part-time, from of any nature whatsoever during the term of this employment contract, without notice to the Sports Director and the President, unless the employer has notified its intention not to renew or extend the present contract of employment. job.

A more common passage is like this one, from the Maryland accord with DJ Durkin …

The coach will inform the sports director before entering into any agreement, agreement or contract by which the coach receives any income or benefit related to an athlete from sources external to the University.

… or this, from the Texas A & M contract with Jimbo Fisher, which contains a clause similar to that of Petrino, but applies only to part-time work and do not other coaching jobs:

Something like the Petrino language is not common.

Louisville knew who he was going to bed with.

The Cardinals prepared for the possibility that Petrino was trying to leave because he had been doing so for over a decade. But when they extended their contract after two years, they did not prepare to lose many games.