Texas football owes Tom Herman an insane buyout if fired this year

Tom Herman has had a couple of pretty good seasons with Texas football. The only problem is Texas football fans want great seasons, not good ones.

Paying to get rid of a poorly performing college football coach can often be an expensive adventure. As it turns out, the University of Texas’ Tom Herman is a well-paid coach. While Herman hasn’t spent much time in Austin, he’s only been there since 2017, his time leading the Longhorns might be coming to an end if Texas football doesn’t start winning championships.

But paying to get rid of Herman will prove to be a costly endeavor for the Longhorns. Texas would be paying to get rid of the 11th-highest-paid coach in the country, according to USA Today. That’s not exactly a cheap thing to do.

Prior to the pandemic, Herman was set to make $6 million during this contract year, not counting any incentive bonuses or anything of that sort. Herman agreed to take a bit of a pay cut because of the coronavirus and is currently set to make $5,827,917 this season.

That’s good for third-best in the Big 12, behind Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley and TCU’s Gary Patterson, which is fitting given that Herman’s Texas team has lost to OU and TCU this season.

Texas would owe Tom Herman more than a $15 million buyout if fired this year

So far, Texas is 5-2 this season. And while Texas has gotten things back on track in recent weeks, Longhorn fans want more than just good years, they want great ones. Herman has done a respectable job of winning, but his team hasn’t established itself amongst the country’s elite college football programs.

And so, despite the fact that Texas handed Herman a contract extensions in 2019, there have been rumblings about his job security this year.

In his four seasons in Austin, Herman has won 30 of his 47 games, which means he’s winning 63.8 percent of the time. Herman also has three bowl wins during his time at Texas (the Texas Bowl at the end of the 2017 season, the Sugar Bowl at the conclusion of the 2018 season, and the Alamo Bowl to wrap up the 2019 season.

That’s good. For most colleges across that country, that’d be more than good enough to guarantee contract extensions for the foreseeable future.

But expectations are higher for Herman and the Horns. The University of Texas hired Herman to win conference championships, to be consistently better than Oklahoma, and to eventually win a national title or two.

That hasn’t happened and that’s why pressure is growing around Herman. In other words, while Texas is good, Texas isn’t “back.”

If that pressure continues to grow and officials decide to move on from Herman, it’ll cost them $15,416,667 as of December 1, 2020, according to USA Today. That would be the cost of extending a coach and then deciding to fire him. And that’s a lot of money.

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