Colorado fires Karl Dorrell; what’s next for the Buffaloes? | College Football Enquirer
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger discuss Colorado’s decision to fire Karl Dorell, and lament the massive buyouts that college coaches keep receiving when they are fired before their contracts are up.
Video Transcript
[AUDIO LOGO]
DAN WETZEL: Colorado fired Karl Dorrell. The best result of the season so far for Colorado was a 43-20 loss to Arizona. This had to happen. This is not a functioning football team right now. Why they gave him a huge buyout, I don't know. My God. Again, the agents--
PAT FORDE: Again, the story--
DAN WETZEL: Coaches' agents just ski masking these ADs. Where was Karl Dorrell going--
ROSS DELLENGER: Who were they bidding against? They were bidding against themselves is what they were-- I mean, I don't understand it either.
DAN WETZEL: Guy was an NFL assistant. Yeah, Pat, you grew up in Colorado, so you can explain this. Obviously, Boulder, awesome, awesome city for me. I don't know if it's great for 18-year-old football players. I mean, look, they won the title a long time ago.
Eric Bieniemy sitting there at the Chiefs. It'd be pretty interesting. But what is Colorado capable of? And what kind of coach can they get? And should they just throw it all at Bieniemy?
PAT FORDE: Well, yeah, it's a weird job. As you said, it's a great college town. It's a great place to live. It is very far from a football hotbed. The football hotbed circles around the Broncos, period. It's a very pro state. And Boulder itself is not super sports-attuned, other than outdoor sports. There's not people that give a lot of money to the school to be good at football. They don't spend lavishly on facilities.
They're never going to compete for a national championship again, I don't think. That would be extremely hard to replicate. They had some very good coaches who did some incredible recruiting. Probably took in some pretty rough characters for a while, but they had a very good run. And it's going to be hard to ever replicate that again.
ROSS DELLENGER: I think there's a lot of people there also, like Dan had mentioned, scratching their head over why Karl Dorrell had the buyout that he had, $11.4 million. So we had Frost, who leads it all with $15 million buyout. Dorrell is second, 11.4. Dorrell is second. Jeff Collins, 11.3. Paul Chryst settled down to 11. And then Herm Edwards is around 8.
So we're already up to $56.7 million. Last year was believed to be a record at $94 million in buyout money, but we're already up to $56.7 million. Dorrell's firing and Dorrell's buyout is a good window into this buyout situation in college football, which is just going wild.
DAN WETZEL: Karl Dorrell was the Miami Dolphins wide receiver coach.
[LAUGHTER]
PAT FORDE: He was hired.
DAN WETZEL: He hadn't coached college football since 2007. He's the wide receiver coach. He had previously been with the Jets. He did a year at Vanderbilt as an OC. Houston Texans, Dolphins before that. He's just a guy out there. Stop giving these buyouts like you're worried that William Christopher Swinney is going to leave. Yeah, you got that guy? Sure. Or you got-- even then, they're going to go. People are going to go.
Enough with the buyouts. There is no guarantee on either side. Where are you going? And if they were sitting here right now saying, hey, next coach, we've got $7 million squirreled away here-- because we're not giving it to the last coach-- for improved coaching salaries or use of a private plane so you can get around the West easier. Or whatever infrastructure you need. Instead, it's like, oh, we just blew that money. It was a bad, bad hire and a bad contract.
ROSS DELLENGER: Does this make you guys feel any better? I'm reading about his contract now. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dorrell accepted a 10% pay cut of his total salary.
DAN WETZEL: Thanks. Karl was a nice guy.
[LAUGHTER]
Great, thank you. There was no fans. I mean, you know what, you only had to coach half the season.
PAT FORDE: Right.
DAN WETZEL: Amazing. Amazing. $11 million.
PAT FORDE: $11 million.
DAN WETZEL: It's just a dumb buyout. It's bad athletic directoring. It's bad. And it's just the business. It's not just Colorado. It's all of them. Stop acting like they have all the power. Yeah, certain guys do have some power. This isn't it.
