Source: USA TODAY
The six-year, $30 million contract that football coach Kevin Sumlin signed last week with Texas A&M contains buyout provisions that would result in Sumlin being paid all of the money remaining on his contract if he is fired without cause at any point during the deal.
However, it requires him to pay only a $5 million buyout if he terminates the deal without cause before the Aggies’ last game of the 2016 season, including any bowl game. The deal is effective Jan. 1, 2014.
Texas A&M’s willingness to essentially guarantee the deal is rare for a school with such a high-dollar contract. All of the schools paying recurring compensation of more than $4 million to their football coach this season — Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio State and LSU — have caps on what they would have to pay to fire their coach without cause.
The agreement, which USA TODAY Sports received Monday in response to an open-records request to the university, also includes a wide-ranging and specific set of provisions related to NCAA rules compliance. The provisions are modeled heavily on those included in the contract to which the University of Oregon and football coach Mark Helfrich agreed this past January, and include the requirement that Sumlin “actively look for red flags of potential violations.”
The contract that Butch Jones signed with Tennessee in August 2013 incorporated a nine-page NCAA document titled “Head Coach Responsibilities Regarding Compliance with and Violations of NCAA Rules.”
While provisions requiring compliance with NCAA rules are standard in college athletics contracts, the requirements of the Oregon, Tennessee — and now Texas A&M — deals are extraordinary in scope and detail.
Oregon’s contract was drafted not only against the backdrop of then-pending and now-implemented NCAA rules changes that increased head coaches’ responsibility for rules compliance, but also at a time when the school was working its way through an NCAA investigation of wrongdoing by the football program. In June, the NCAA handed Oregon three years of probation and gave former coach Chip Kelly an 18-month show-cause order, which would require a school seeking to hire Kelly to demonstrate why he should be employed.
Texas A&M athletics department spokesman Jason Cook said Monday the football program is not the subject of any NCAA investigatory or enforcement action. He said the compliance provisions were included “in response to guidance from the NCAA regarding responsibilities for coaches. Athletics director Eric Hyman was not available for immediate comment.
Beginning Aug. 1, NCAA Division I head coaches became subject to individual penalty for NCAA rules violations committed by their assistants, unless they can prove they took preventive steps to acknowledge potential violations and educate their staff about how to deal with issues.
And Sumlin’s new contract, under a heading titled “Athletic Department Investigations,” states that he “shall be responsible for the actions of all assistant coaches and administrators who report, directly or indirectly” to him. That language did not appear in either of the two previous versions of Sumlin’s contract with Texas A&M.
The new contract also states that Sumlin and the university “agree to implement the actions described” in an exhibit modeled on one made that was incorporated into agreement between Oregon and Helfrich.
Sumlin’s contract states, for example, that the Texas A&M president will meet with Sumlin annually as part of the athletics director’s head coaches meeting “to discuss the president’s expectations for NCAA rules compliance of all head coaches.” It also says the athletics director and the compliance director will meet with Sumlin annually.
In addition, there is a 10-item list of monitoring responsibilities that Sumlin must carry out in consultation with the compliance director. Among those are assigning a football liaison to the university’s compliance staff and assigning football staff members to monitor specific areas of compliance such as recruiting contacts, amateurism and telephone contracts. Distinct from the Oregon contract, Texas A&M requires Sumlin:
—To “maintain accurate and dated records of all discussions and correspondence between Sumlin and his senior staff concerning the compliance efforts of the football staff.”
—”Ensure that football staff is aware of its responsibility to provide compliance related records (e.g. recruiting logs, detailed telephone statements) to the university upon request.”
The buyout provisions of Sumlin’s deal are very different from those under his previous contract, which has been in effect since Jan. 1.
Under the prior deal, which was paying Sumlin $3.1 million, Sumlin could have received at most $6.8 million if fired without cause.
In addition the prior deal required him to pay a buyout for terminating without cause at any point, although the amounts ranged from $2 million in the early part of the deal, then fell by $400,000 a year, beginning on March 31, 2014.
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