Bianchi: Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss contract is a sad blueprint for college football’s broken system

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Can we please stop pretending college football is anything other than a billion-dollar clown show held together by buyout checks, booster fantasies and athletic directors who negotiate contracts with all the fiscal discipline of a drunken lottery winner?

And nowhere is the absurdity louder, dumber, or more perfectly distilled than in the latest coaching mania surrounding Lane Kiffin — the hottest name in the “Who Wants to Overpay a Coach?” sweepstakes now captivating Gainesville and Baton Rouge.

This isn’t a Florida story. It’s not an Ole Miss story. It’s not even a Lane Kiffin story. It’s a story about the sport itself — a rootless, rudderless endeavor that has become a national joke in how it runs itself, legislates itself, hires, fires, chases and discards coaches as if money has no meaning and contracts have no consequences.

If Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss contract meant anything, he wouldn’t be a candidate at Florida or LSU and his sole focus would be on what it should be on — winning a national championship for the Rebels, who have agreed to pay him $9 million a year for the next five years.

Why does any college coach get to sign a contract for, say, $50 at his current school — a fully guaranteed, platinum-plated lifetime security blanket — and then walk away to another job for a measly $4 million buyout? In contrast, if a school fires the coach, it is on the hook for almost the full amount of the $50 million?

Why does a university agree to this? Why is the contract only binding on one side? Why do schools behave like hostages negotiating with a kidnapper instead of employers negotiating with an employee?

Two words: Jimmy Sexton.

College football’s most powerful man — more powerful than commissioners, presidents, the NCAA or the College Football Playoff committee — is an agent who has turned athletic directors into obedient marionettes. He pulls a string, and the ADs dance. He raises an eyebrow, and universities surrender millions. He clears his throat, and administrations reach for the checkbook with the reflexive panic of someone trying to silence a bomb.

It’s Sexton’s world. Everyone else is just wiring the money.

And the result? The most lopsided, laughable contractual ecosystem in all of American sports. Coaches get lifetime guarantees. Schools get their head coach negotiating with other schools in the middle of a national championship run.

Ole Miss is 10-1. The Rebels are rolling into Thanksgiving week with playoff dreams that once would have been dismissed as science fiction. They are in the middle of the school’s most successful run in modern history.

And what is their coach doing?

He’s watching offers escalate. He’s in the middle of the most high-stakes job hunt in the SEC while his players, his staff and his fans live on the edge of history.

This is not Kiffin’s fault. This is the system’s fault.

He’s allowed to do it. Encouraged to do it. Enabled to do it by the very schools now chasing him. Because universities across America have decided that a coach under contract is not a coach you actually control, but a coach merely *renting space* until he finds a better deal.

And why shouldn’t Kiffin listen?

If Florida or LSU hired him tomorrow, they’d owe Ole Miss only $4 million. Hell, the Gators can find $4 million in their couch cushions. However, if Ole Miss were to fire him, the Rebels would owe Kiffin nearly $40 million.

How is this even remotely sane?

Why don’t schools write contracts that say: “If you want out of the $50 million remaining on your deal, you owe us $50 million”?

Why does only one party pay the penalty?

Why do schools sign these deals?

Because Jimmy Sexton tells them to. And because ADs, terrified of losing a good coach, will sign anything placed in front of them. They will give years, money, escalators and guarantees that defy common sense.

And when the same coach they fought to keep eventually leaves them? They shrug and call it “the cost of doing business.”

If the Gators had to pay Ole Miss $40 million or $50 million to hire Lane Kiffin, would they still be calling? Would LSU? Would anyone?

Of course not.

But until universities stop pretending these buyouts are sacred scripture instead of negotiable documents, they’ll continue torching money.

Kiffin, for his part, is stuck inside the very absurdity benefiting him. He has resurrected his career, his image and a program that once felt allergic to relevance. He speaks openly and honestly about how happy he is at Ole Miss. He talks about being in the “good old days” right now. He talks about balance, sobriety, perspective.

And still, even with a potential playoff run upcoming, even with the greatest on-field opportunity of his life in front of him, he’s being pushed into a decision he shouldn’t have to make.

Stay and coach a team with a legitimate national championship shot … or leave to take a job he might want more in the long term, because the hiring cycle forces decisions before the postseason.

What a sport.

This is the future of the 12-team College Football Playoff. More teams with something to play for, and more coaches distracted while playing for it.  As the playoff expands, so does the chaos.

It won’t be long until half a dozen coaches will be juggling playoff prep with job interviews every December. This is the system we built: one where the people most responsible for postseason success are the least focused on it.

There have been reports that Ole Miss has given Kiffin an ultimatum to make up his mind quickly and either stay or go. Kiffin has denied that he has been given an ultimatum, and I believe him. Why would Ole Miss — a school whose one and only national championship came 65 years ago — ruin its once-in-a-lifetime chance to win another natty by forcing Kiffin’s hand? That would be the dictionary definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

However, it is fascinating to wonder what Kiffin would do if there were an ultimatum. Would he really walk out on a playoff team to chase another job? Would he abandon a locker room he brought to national relevance? Would he leave a chance to have a statue built outside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium? And if he did, would he ever stop regretting it?

And if he stayed, would he risk missing out on the opportunity he’s always dreamed of?

The sport has created a lose-lose scenario: no loyalty rewarded, no success protected, no season sacred.

Meanwhile, universities set records for financial stupidity every fall. Texas A&M paid Jimbo Fisher $76 million to not coach. Penn State originally paid James Franklin $50 million to not coach (negotiated down to $9 million when Franklin was hired by Virginia Tech a few days ago). LSU owes Brian Kelly $53 million to not coach. Florida paid Billy Napier $21 million to not coach. Florida State might soon pay Mike Norvell $54 million for the same privilege.

College football coaches have more freedom, leverage and financial protection than the universities that employ them.

The solution is simple:

If a coach leaves, he should owe what the school owes.

If a coach signs a contract, it should bind both sides equally.

If a school gives a coach $50 million in security, the school should get $50 million in return.

Draw the line and plant the flag.

Because until someone fights back, college football will remain what it has become:

A sport where failure is rewarded, loyalty is optional, chaos is expected, and the contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on – unless you’re the fired coach who’s laughing all the way to the bank or the successful coach who’s cashing an even bigger check at his next job.

All of which explains why no one is enjoying the madness more than Jimmy Sexton, the sport’s undefeated, undisputed and very well-compensated puppeteer.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my new radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen

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