How Morris' buyout is structured
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FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas is on the hook for another eight-figure buyout after firing head coach Chad Morris on Sunday.
According to his employment agreement, Morris is owed 70 percent of his remaining contract, which is about $10.1 million. It comes just two years after the Razorbacks fired Bret Bielema, who received an $11.9 million buyout.
“Obviously, it’s a challenge for us to take that money from somewhere and apply it to a buyout,” athletics director Hunter Yurachek said. “But we’ve got a great chief financial officer (Clayton Hamilton) that has assured me that we have the means to do so, and I was comfortable making that change because of that.”
There had been speculation that Morris agreed to a smaller amount in a lump sum, but Yurachek denied those rumors Monday afternoon. Instead, the buyout will be paid in equal monthly amounts over the remainder of his contract, which goes through Dec. 31, 2023.
Although that works out to about $204,167 per month, Yurachek also mentioned the agreement includes Morris’ “duty to mitigate.” That means the buyout could be reduced based on future employment, which the former coach is required to pursue. Morris also can’t subsidize his income with the buyout.
Both of those requirements have become a point of contention with Bielema. According to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Razorback Foundation has stopped making the $320,833 monthly payments and wants a refund of the $4.2 million it has already paid the former coach.
It argues that Bielema did not actively try to find another job before becoming a volunteer assistant with the New England Patriots and that he is now working for under market value as their defensive line coach.
He was fired following a 4-8 season that included just one SEC victory, which dropped his overall record to 29-34 and conference record to 11-29 in five seasons. Morris was even worse, going just 4-18 and failing to win any of his 14 SEC games.
Naturally, that led to the resurfacing of Yurachek’s comments during his introductory press conference the day before Morris was introduced, when he said losing should be a reason for termination with cause.
On Monday, Yurachek reiterated that the buyout situation across college athletics is not great and said again that he felt losing should nullify any buyout. However, he doesn’t foresee any major changes to the buyout structure for the next coach.
“(It’s) tough to be a pioneer in that because that hurts your candidate pool moving forward,” Yurachek said. “It has to be an industry-wide change. It can’t be one where Arkansas takes the lead on that, per se, or it’s going to hurt our candidate pool.”