Don’t feel too bad for fired Boise State football coach; he just won the lottery | Opinion

College football coaches are often the highest-paid public employees in their state. That’s certainly true in the case of Boise State head football coach Andy Avalos, who was fired over the weekend with two games left in the regular season.

Consider this: Avalos made 10 times more than Idaho Gov. Brad Little this year. Avalos’ base pay was $1.55 million, compared to the governor’s paltry $151,400.

So don’t feel too bad for Avalos for getting fired, even though being canned can’t feel good. Not only was he paid handsomely for coaching a sport, he’ll have a healthy payday once he gets paid out for the remaining two years of his contract — for not coaching.

Boise State will have to pay Avalos over $3 million. If any of us poor suckers who have to work for a living were told that we were getting a $3 million payout, we’d think we had won the lottery.

It’s bad enough that we’re paying so much to college coaches; now we’re paying them after we fire them.

The guy before Avalos, Bryan Harsin, who left Boise State to coach at Auburn, where he was fired after less than two full seasons as head coach, got a payday of $13.5 million, according to 247sports.com.

(As if that weren’t bad enough, Auburn is still paying off $21.5 million on the contract of the coach they fired before Harsin.)

These payouts all pale in comparison with that of fired Texas A&M football coach Jimbo Fisher, who will receive $75 million.

This is crazy money that’s just being thrown away.

How many scholarships for student-athletes could be paid from just the money spent on buying out the contracts of fired coaches?

We understand that college football, with its lucrative TV deals, sponsorships and ticket sales, generates an income for colleges and more than pays for itself at most universities, including Boise State.

But these kinds of staggering numbers to pay someone to coach a team playing a game — and now pay them to not coach — illustrate the misplaced priorities we have as a society.

So if you’re tempted to feel sorry for any football coach who gets fired, save your tears for someone else.

This story was originally published November 13, 2023 at 12:15 PM.