THE BOWL ELIGIBLE BLOG
The 25 Highest College Football Coach Buyouts (2026)
Kirby Smart tops Curt Cignetti and a crowded $60 million club in our sourced ranking of the 25 highest school-owes coach buyouts in the 2026 file.
This is not the same list as the biggest coaching buyouts in history. That ranking looks backward at coaches who were fired and the checks their schools agreed to write. This one looks at the current 2026 FBS coaching file and asks a more dangerous question: what would it cost to fire the men still holding the jobs?
The file covers 138 current head coaches. Only 98 have a sourced school-owes buyout, so this top 25 is a ranking of those 98, not a claim that every private or formula-only contract has been priced. Seventy-one figures are dated December 1, 2025. The rest carry another as-of label recorded in the CSV, including 2026 figures and specific contract moments. Where a newer extension superseded an older number, we used the newer CSV figure. Add the top 25 entered values together and the total is $1,277,135,350. That is the price of changing your mind at the top of modern college football.
| Rank | Coach | School | Buyout in file | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kirby Smart | Georgia | $105,107,583 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 2 | Curt Cignetti | Indiana | $92,600,000 | 2026 |
| 3 | Lane Kiffin | LSU | $72,800,000 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 4 | Ryan Day | Ohio State | $70,916,667 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 5 | Lincoln Riley | USC | $70,000,000 | Sept. 2026 |
| 6 | Matt Rhule | Nebraska | $64,500,000 | 2026 |
| 7 | Matt Campbell | Penn State | $61,680,000 | After 2026 season |
| 8 | Mario Cristobal | Miami | $61,000,000 | 2025 |
| 9 | Kalen DeBoer | Alabama | $60,843,750 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 10 | Steve Sarkisian | Texas | $60,307,500 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 11 | Dabo Swinney | Clemson | $60,000,000 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 12 | Mike Norvell | Florida State | $58,667,708 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 13 | Dan Lanning | Oregon | $56,733,333 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 14 | Bret Bielema | Illinois | $49,491,667 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 15 | Josh Heupel | Tennessee | $37,500,000 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 16 | Brent Venables | Oklahoma | $36,158,333 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 17 | Jedd Fisch | Washington | $33,686,666 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 18 | Jeff Brohm | Louisville | $33,633,333 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 19 | Joey McGuire | Texas Tech | $29,500,000 | 2026 |
| 20 | Eli Drinkwitz | Missouri | $28,875,685 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 21 | Shane Beamer | South Carolina | $27,903,958 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 22 | Kenny Dillingham | Arizona State | $27,100,000 | 2026 |
| 23 | P. J. Fleck | Minnesota | $26,600,000 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
| 24 | Kyle Whittingham | Michigan | $25,800,000 | 2026 |
| 25 | Kirk Ferentz | Iowa | $25,729,167 | Dec. 1, 2025 |
Smart, Cignetti, and then a traffic jam
Kirby Smart's lead is not cosmetic. His $105,107,583 figure is $12,507,583 ahead of Curt Cignetti's $92,600,000. Cignetti's place near the top is also the clearest example of why older lists go stale. USA Today had him at $56,700,000 on December 1, 2025, before Indiana's February 2026 extension. The newer deal is reported as fully guaranteed if he is fired without cause, so the CSV uses about $92.6 million and the old number belongs in a footnote, not the ranking.
Behind them, the list compresses. Ryan Day, Lincoln Riley, Matt Rhule, Matt Campbell, Mario Cristobal, Kalen DeBoer, Steve Sarkisian, Dabo Swinney, Mike Norvell, and Dan Lanning all sit between about $56.7 million and $70.9 million. Riley's USC figure needs a label: it is a reported estimate of about $70 million for a private contract, not a disclosed exact total. Campbell's Penn State figure has a different warning. The $61,680,000 in the file is the amount reported if he is fired after the 2026 season, so it is not directly interchangeable with a December 1, 2025 snapshot.
Handle the conflicts like an adult
Lane Kiffin is the ranking's largest source fight. The CSV uses $72,800,000, the figure in the December 1, 2025 table built from the LSU term sheet reporting: 80 percent of remaining salary, with no offset. The research notes also record a $63,300,000 figure on a 2026 list and about $62,400,000 after the 2026 season. Those are not rounding differences; they are different snapshots of a new and expensive contract. We ranked the CSV figure because this post is explicitly a ranking of the file, but no reader should quote Kiffin without the conflict attached.
DeBoer needs a similar note. Alabama's row still carries the December 1 dollar figure, while its notes describe a 2026 deal paying a higher salary and owing 90 percent of the remaining value if he is fired without cause. Because the file gives no replacement dollar total, we did not calculate one from the percentage. That restraint is the whole point of the exercise. The same discipline explains the 40 blank rows elsewhere in the file: a formula is not a buyout figure, and a private school's silence is not a zero.
The cliff after No. 14
The top five total $411,424,250, and the top ten total $719,755,500. Then comes the drop. Bret Bielema is 14th at $49,491,667, but Josh Heupel is 15th at $37,500,000, a fall of $11,991,667 in one step. After that, the list becomes merely enormous instead of historic: Brent Venables, Jedd Fisch, and Jeff Brohm in the $33 million range, Joey McGuire at $29,500,000, and a bottom five still above $25 million.
Kirk Ferentz holding the last spot is fitting. He is the longest-tenured coach in the file, at Iowa since 1999, and even the 25th-largest sourced current buyout clears $25 million. The historical list shows how fast the ceiling moved; this one shows where the floor now sits. For the mechanics behind the guarantees, read how coach buyouts work. To see what happens when schools actually pay, visit the dead money list. Or skip the reading and play Buyout or Ballout, where the invoice is the game.