Thamel: Orange football head coach Dino Babers owed more than $10m at end of season

The Syracuse Orange football season has begun fall camp, and many of the conversations around the team have centered around the need for success this season, as the Orange and head coach Dino Babers are still looking for just the second winning season as he heads into his 7th year at the helm of the program. This unfortunate overall record has stoked discussions about Babers’ job security, but with little known about his contract, any conversation eventually circles around to the unknowns of a buyout, and years remaining on the contract.

Pete Thamel of ESPN wrote a roundup of college football coaches on the hot seat for this upcoming season. (ESPN+ Sub Needed) The biggest piece of revelatory information regarding the Orange is the confirmation from Thamel that head football coach Dino Babers will be owed over $10 million after the 2022 season.

Last year, we wrote an article speculating on Babers’ contract after Split Zone Duo’s Steven Godfrey mentioned that the head coach’s job security was high due to prohibitive buy out costs. Based on publicly available information, we were able to make an educated guess that Babers was going to have somewhere between $5 and $10 million left on the contract after last season. Clearly, we underestimated the average annual value (AAV) of the contract, or do not have enough information on the distribution of the deal that would impact a correct guess at the AAV but incorrect guess at the money left to be paid out.

This information adds more clarity to discussions had about the future of Babers at Syracuse, as the buyout has always been speculated, and we know that the athletic department is currently committed to two large economic projects; renovations to the JMA Dome (funded jointly by SU and the State of New York) and the new Athletic Center upgrades that includes a 51,000 square foot football facility.

Again: without definitive knowledge of the athletic department’s budget and funds on hand, there’s no definitive statement we can make towards on how this knowledge impacts Babers’ job security. All we know is that there is a lot of money being spent at Syracuse on football.