Why College Basketball Coaching Buyouts Feel Out of Control Right Now

In 1959, a few years after Phog Allen retired and a few years before John Wooden won his first NCAA title, Saxon White-Kessinger published “The Indispensable Man.”

If you’re not familiar, all 20 lines of her poem are worthwhile. But here are the four we’ll focus on today:

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining,
Is a measure of how much you’ll be missed.

Phog Allen, who succeeded James Naismith as the head ball coach at Kansas, was a dude who could have claimed to be the exception to this rule. Over the course of 39 seasons at KU, Allen won 24 league titles, 590 games and the 1952 NCAA championship.

Yet when Allen turned 70 during the 1955-56 school year -- hitting Kansas University’s mandatory retirement age for coaches, professors, etc. – he did not receive special dispensation. With prized recruit Wilt Chamberlain due to be eligible for varsity play in the fall of 1956, who would have blamed Kansas’ decisionmakers for giving Allen another year or two? But they didn’t.

Now, let’s fast-forward 70 years while simultaneously driving 86 miles west from KU’s Allen Fieldhouse to Kansas State’s Bramlage Coliseum.

On Sunday, Kansas State announced it was firing head coach Jerome Tang after he lost 11 of 12 conference games. This run of rankness included a brief postgame news conference where Tang ripped his players after a 29-point home loss to Cincinnati on Feb. 11. Among other things, he said his guys didn’t deserve to wear the uniform and that “very few” would return next year.

Tang’s words inspired athletic director Gene Taylor to declare Tang was fired “for cause,” which is legalese for “Heck, no, we don’t want to pay his $18.675 million buyout.” While lawyers will determine how much of the buyout Tang does receive, that prospective tussle buries the lede:

In what world does Jerome Tang — or anyone else who serves as the head coach of a Div. I college basketball program — merit an $18.675 million buyout?

Did no athletic directors get Kessinger’s memo?

If Kansas basketball found a way to cope without Phog Allen…and North Carolina somehow carried on without Dean Smith (who won the 1952 national title playing for Allen)…and Kentucky still managed to field a team after Adolph Rupp (who also played for Allen) hit his mandatory retirement age, it should have clicked with Kansas State that there’s virtually no need to offer anything other than a minimal buyout.

Yes, we understand these massive buyouts for getting fired are a counterbalance to the buyout figures a coach must pay for breaking a contract and jumping to another school. But, again, schools get to hire another coach and make another run either way. The coach doesn’t pack up the program and take it with him. John Calipari tried when he jumped from Kentucky to Arkansas in 2024, but UK still hired new coaches and players, completed a full schedule and went just as far in last year’s NCAA Tournament (the Sweet Sixteen) as Arkansas.

Anyway, back to Tang. He received that $18.675 million buyout, as well as a healthy raise, as part of a contract extension after guiding Kansas State to the 2023 Elite Eight in his first year at the helm. What an amazing, unique achievement that needed to be rewarded, right?

Well, not exactly. Bruce Weber led the Wildcats to the 2018 Elite Eight. Frank Martin led the Wildcats to the 2010 Elite Eight. Lon Kruger led the Wildcats to the 1988 Elite Eight. Jack Hartman led the Wildcats to the 1981 Elite Eight and three more before that. Tex Winter took the Wildcats to the 1964 Final Four, where they lost to UCLA in the semis as Wooden claimed his first of 10 national titles.

Get the idea? There’s no college basketball coach who leaves a wrist-deep hole in a program and therefore must be rewarded with a massive buyout clause that handcuffs them to the school.

It’s simply not worth it.