Overhauling a major college football coaching staff is never cheap, and Nebraska is the latest that can attest to that fact of Power Five life.
Following the end of the 2014 regular season, the Cornhuskers fired head coach Bo Pelini, with only one of Pelini’s assistants being retained by Mike Riley. According to information obtained by the Omaha World-Herald, "[p]arting ways with... Pelini and the rest of his Husker football coaching staff after the 2014 season cost Nebraska close to $8.5 million when tallying the final money paid to his assistants.”
Pelini is on the “Charlie Weis pension plan” as the current Youngstown State head coach is receiving monthly payments of $128,000 from the athletic department and will continue to receive that monthly amount through February of 2019. The World-Herald writes that "[t]he final buyout for Pelini will cover almost $6.54 million, with mitigated earnings [from the YSU job] lowering that from around the original $7.9 million.”
As for former Pelini assistants, those eight coaches were paid a combined $1,941,501 as compensation for the housecleaning, bringing the total to just shy of $8.5 million.
The buyouts, incidentally, were paid out through athletic department reserves.
