Board member: Louisville may not be able to afford Bobby Petrino's buyout
The 2018 season has not gone well for Louisville so far.
The Cardinals dropped to 2-4 with a 66-31 home loss to Georgia Tech on Friday night, giving up an absurd 542 rushing yards in the process. As a result, the tension is rising surrounding the job status of Bobby Petrino.
As our Pete Thamel and Pat Forde detailed in their 10 takeaways column on Saturday night:
A temperature check of the hottest seats in the sport should start in the ACC, where North Carolina and Louisville might be the most likely locales for Power Five coaching changes.
And a heat check on Bobby Petrino’s seat shows that it might have surpassed Larry Fedora’s. Louisville is 2-4, and it’s a bad 2-4, featuring three blowout losses — the most recent a 66-31 home humiliation at the hands of Georgia Tech on Friday night. Tech pounded out an ungodly 542 rushing yards on the Cardinals, who looked completely bewildered by Paul Johnson’s trademark option offense.
But there’s one major hurdle to a potential firing of Petrino
To fire Petrino, Louisville would need to pay his $14 million buyout. One UL board member went on record with the Louisville Courier-Journal saying that the university’s current financial situation may prohibit that.
“The university is not in a position to buy him out,” former Churchill Downs president Tom Meeker told the paper.
Money is tight. Donations are down. The Hickman Camp Fund, whose $16.8 million balance represented more than two-thirds of ULAA’s available funds at the end of 2017, lost more than half of its value through basketball coach Chris Mack’s buyout from Xavier University and U of L’s settlement with former athletic director Tom Jurich.
ULAA business manager Jeff Spoelker said Monday that the Hickman Camp Fund had dwindled to $8 million as of June. With $168 million in debt service already scheduled through 2044 and Rick Pitino’s breach-of-contract lawsuit still pending, ULAA appears loath to take on additional liabilities.
Petrino signed a seven-year contract extension in 2016, meaning his deal extends into 2023.
As detailed by SB Nation, if UL fires Petrino without cause, the contract dictates payments to Petrino through 2018 and three additional years:
His contract also includes a $500,000 annual payment when Louisville’s Academic Progress Report score is above 935, and his team is above that mark, as is almost every Division I program.
Petrino’s 2018 pay, including the APR bonus, comes out to $4.475 million. If Louisville fired him on Dec. 1, right after the season, it would owe: $4.025 million for 2019, $4.075 million for 2020 and $4.125 million for 2021. That’s $12.225 million.
Add in whatever’s left of his $3.9 million base salary for 2018 and, well, you get the idea. It’s a lot of money — money that Louisville evidently does not have ready and able to shell out to push Petrino aside.
Could Louisville still turn things around this season?
At 2-4 and 0-3 in ACC play, things do not look promising for the Cardinals, who would need to win four of their remaining six games to reach a bowl game — something they have done in every season Petrino has been head coach.
That road starts at Boston College on Saturday, where the Eagles, as of Tuesday, are nearly two-touchdown favorites. From there, UL has a bye week before hosting Wake Forest, traveling to play No. 4 Clemson and Syracuse and rounding out its season with home games against No. 20 NC State and No. 18 Kentucky.
Other than the Wake Forest game, UL figures to be a significant underdog in all of those matchups.
Louisville has always been tough to stop offensively under Petrino, but without Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson, the offense, ranked 115th nationally, has fallen off a cliff. The defense (93rd in total defense), in its first year under Brian VanGorder, hasn’t been much better.
For his part, Petrino, even with the speculation about his job status, said at his Monday press conference that he’s going to keep a positive attitude. He also referenced the 2015 season. That year, UL started 2-4 before winning six of its final seven games, including a bowl victory.
“I think we have the potential to turn it around. We’ve actually been 2-4 before, the year we were 0-3 when Lamar [Jackson] was a freshman, and then got back on track and finished really strong. That’s what you have to picture. That’s what you have to do,” Petrino said. “But, the way to do that is to focus on one game and get ready for Boston College and find a way to win.”
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