Bobby Petrino gets $850,000 a year base salary from Western Kentucky to replace Willie Taggart. Taggart got five years, $5.75 million from the University of South Florida. Obviously, the price of a coach with a good track record did what the price of cheese did in the past year.
What does that mean for FIU, who needs someone with a college head coaching track record to justify even partially the firing of Mario Cristobal?
I covered Butch Davis' financial situation in a previous post (never mind what he's told FIU). He's getting $590,000 from North Carolina each of the next three years. Whatever another school pays him to coach is subtracted from Carolina's end. If Davis does his friend Pete Garcia a solid, FIU can get Davis cheap and Davis still gets his $590,000.
Houston Nutt's not eating government cheese either after a $6 million buyout from Ole Miss. Randy Shannon got only one year into a new four-year deal when UM sacked him. He sued to get his money.
In other words, guys who don't necessarily need the money. Bobby Petrino got fired with cause by Arkansas and Western needed somebody to replace Taggart. USF ponied up to get Taggart to leave a place where he had been successful and ignore his other opportunities.
And Cristobal, who was making $453,183 as a base, isn't one of the final two at Temple, so that payoff savings isn't coming to FIU yet or via Philadelphia.
Trying to find out if it was any of the above available three -- or if it was someone else -- who met with Pete Garcia and Board of Trustees head Albert Maury on campus this week.
Panama City Bozeman defensive end Chandler Burkett got a visit from Maryland recently, but he's staying with his FIU commitment for now. From what I hear, current FIU players also are playing from the Wait-and-See playbook, although junior defensive tackle Isame Faciane did Tweet that he was considering transferring.
