Todd Lickliter, fired in March by Iowa, is one of 31 coaches to lose their job this season. Lickliter was 38-58 in three seasons in Iowa City, but he's not walking away empty-handed.
Lickliter’s severance agreement calls for the school to pay $600,000 for each of the four years remaining on his contract, even if he gets another job.
He's not alone in cashing in after getting canned.
An analysis by Bloomberg of 51 public universities in the six largest conferences found that schools paid $38.6 million in severance costs for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, compared with $18 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007. In the past three years, universities have paid more than $79.5 million to fire coaches and athletic department administrators.
Tennessee spent $7 million, Auburn $6.8 million and Nebraska $6.6 million in the three-year period.
While the cost of firing coaches has increased, so has the cost of hiring them. Bloomberg reports that the expense for coaches' salaries, benefits and bonuses increased 22% the past three years, while athletic department revenue rose an average of 11%.
Departments are leaning more on donors to help pay the freight. Between 2007 and 2009, donors paid $49.1 million toward coaches' salaries, or about 3% of the $1.53 billion total, according to university records.
Comments