We noted this week that Bill Belichick, with an estimated salary of $7.5 million a year, is believed to be the highest-paid coach in all of American sports. But one of Belichick’s former assistants was paid almost as much as that not to coach.
This week’s news that Notre Dame paid former head coach Charlie Weis more than $6.6 million in termination payments after he was fired at the end of the 2009 season means that Weis received more in severance from Notre Dame than almost any coach in football -- pro or college -- makes in a year.
Weis was the Patriots’ offensive coordinator for five years before taking the Notre Dame job, then joined the Chiefs’ staff last year and is back in college this year as the offensive coordinator at Florida. But where ever he ends up, in the NFL or the NCAA, he’s unlikely to find a deal as good as the one he got at Notre Dame.
There’s no way to tell whether Weis will ever be back in the NFL, but he has no financial reason to leave college. As his Notre Dame buyout shows, in “amateur” college football, where even the idea of paying players a few thousand bucks a year is controversial, there’s more money left to pay the coaches.