So, not impressive enough for a buy out at season's end? What would that cost, north of a half million buckaroos?
We've had lots of discussions about this over the last couple of seasons ... biggest misconception is that the school would have to pay the full future value of the contract. As usually the person being terminated early has an interest in having the freedom to consider the full range of alternate employment options, there is a negotiation once the employer puts their cards on the table (i.e. their desire to move on), which then might be followed by a "resignation" instead of a cold termination. IF there is no negotiation, then the school simply sidelines the existing HC, continues to pay their contracted salary on a weekly/monthly basis, and brings in the new person (on new terms) to do the actual HC job. The
de facto terminated coach gets paid per the contract, but also cannot seek alternative employment until the contract expires. If s/he does get alternative employment, then the terms of the earlier contract with the school (in this case, UNH) would terminate as well. In general, there is usually a shared interest with the school and the ex-HC to work something out, and let both sides move on cleanly and quickly to the next step.
Every coaching situation has its own unique features ... ranging from the Umile "coach for life" situation, where (in retrospect) it was very clear there was some substance to that classification, agreed to initially with AD Judy Ray, and then conveniently inherited by our old pal Blue Skies, who was befriended by/beholden to the HC, who tried to "land that plane" by allowing Umile to have one final "extension", PLUS final say on a replacement ... to the Women's Hockey situation, where UNH had just signed McCloskey to a long extension, experienced "buyer's remorse" in short order, and then cruelly manufactured/leveraged a blown-out-of-all-proportion "incident" to support his separation, while threatening him with criminal prosecution for "assault" to force him to accept a pennies-on-the-dollar buyout. The current situation would be more moderate than either of those extreme examples/outcomes ... but who knows what's in the contract? "The devil is in the details" no doubt.
'Watcher has (rightly) been playing it coy on this issue, exactly because none of us really know the exact details. Is it a 3 year deal, or 3 one year deals? The first option has always seemed overly generous, under the circumstances, so maybe it is indeed the latter. This allows UNH and MS7 to talk publicly in good faith about a 3 year commitment (not sure either has to date, either, except through proxies?) which works so as not to hamstring/lame duck MS7 on the recruiting trails, and tamps down the otherwise annual speculation on his job status ... but if MS7 signed all three of those contracts, yet UNH is only signing them on a year-to-year basis based on performance of the previous season, then both sides got something they were looking for last Spring. MS7 gets more time to develop on last year's winning team (plus more time to explore post-UNH options if he struggles to repeat last season's limited success) ... and UNH gets more leverage to cut things short if MS7 returns to (poor) form.
I think one of our posters (IIRC ATW, apologies if it's someone else) filed a FOIA equivalent to get some disclosure on MS7's new deal, as he'd gotten similar disclosure on his previous deal(s). We wait eagerly for those disclosures ...
