It took nearly six weeks for Georgia to find their new defensive coordinator, finally settling on Todd Grantham after being turned down by at least three high-profile candidates.
Now that they have Grantham in the fold, they’ve instituted contractual safeguards to help keep him around for awhile.
According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Grantham would owe the university at least $1.125 million if he leaves for anything other than a college or NFL head-coaching job within the first year.
Grantham’s contract will make him the third-highest paid assistant coach in the country at $750,000 annually, and the school felt it proper to protect themselves from their new coordinator bolting laterally and head coach Mark Richt being forced to go through yet another search.
“When we took a look at this, we’re making a significant commitment to Todd,” athletic director Damon Evans said Tuesday. “We felt with us doing something like that on our end, we had to have a significant commitment from him as an individual coach. That’s why we put in the buyout the way that we did. ...
“We understand individuals have aspirations to be a head coach. We’re not into blocking that. If he can go on to being a head coach at some point in time, so be it. That would mean he would have done an outstanding job here.”