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Florida's president, Bernie Machen, had been talking for a while about wanting to make sure his star coaches, football head man Urban Meyer and basketball's Billy Donovan, were locked up tight and were paid as well as any coach in their respective sports. While he made sure his coaches got paid, that doesn't necessarily mean either is staying put.
Most people's knee-jerk reaction to the new six-year, $24 million deal that Meyer just signed is that he's living in Gainesville until 2015, at the least. But while Meyer is now the highest paid head coach in the SEC, the $4 million a year he'll make doesn't bring any more stability, and the salary could be par for the course for the SEC in a few years. The new deal still puts Meyer third behind USC's Pete Carroll and Notre Dame's Charlie Weis (and possibly fourth behind Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, depending on bonuses).
Meyer couldn't more emphatically state that he has no interest in leaving Florida and that he has absolutely no desire to go to Notre Dame. At least, he doesn't want to go to South Bend right now. It might not be an option, anyway. Weis has a solid team and an easy enough schedule to come up with a big enough year to stick around. But that doesn't mean the NFL might not make a push for Meyer at some point if Notre Dame doesn't decide to change coaches.
Ah, yes. Notre Dame.
If you're thinking the new contract ends any and all speculation and discussion about Meyer ever wanting to go to his dream school in South Bend, there are a mere 500,000 reasons why you'd be wrong.
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The buyout on Meyer's new contract at Florida is just $500,000. Now, in the real world — especially in an economy that has the University of Florida cutting and slashing its budget left and right, chopping off over $40 million this year alone — a half a million isn't anything to sneeze at. But in the silly world of big-time athletics — especially at a place like Notre Dame — $500,000 to bring in a coach with Meyer's stature and résumé is a pittance.
Notre Dame has an endowment of more than $6 billion, ranking in the top 15 of all universities, and is a profitable business as well as an institution of higher learning. If the Irish ever decided to throw whatever money it would take to get Meyer, and the football product became national title-caliber again, the NBC deal that goes through 2015 would quickly increase from the $9 million a year it's currently at. That's not to mention that Notre Dame gets to keep all of its BCS money (it doesn't have to split the pie with its fellow conference members) and other revenue streams would quickly increase (jersey sales, Irish paraphernalia, etc.). In other words, Meyer would pay for himself several times over.
$500,000?! Notre Dame doesn't get out of bed for $500,000. But that's not the issue, and salary isn't the issue.
Yes, getting $4 million a year is nice no matter what, but it's not like Meyer needed more money to stay at Florida. Of course there's a pride thing involved, but after making well over $17 million in the last five years he doesn't need to secure a fifth generation of the Meyer family for life, the cost of living in Gainesville hasn't gone up by that much, and it's not like he has to worry about losing his job any time soon. It's about Florida acknowledging that Meyer is an elite head coach and giving him the proper respect, it's about Florida doing everything possible to keep its star coach, and it's about ego.
Always remember one thing about coaches above all else: they're not normal. It takes a different breed of cat to have the makeup to be a big-time football coach, and while money plays into the equation at some point, when it comes to someone like Meyer, salary is merely a number for him to use when he measures himself against the other coaching gods.
