| Penn State fired its 12th-year coach James Franklin this week after the Nittany Lions, just nine months out from appearing in a College Football Playoff semifinal, fell to 3-3, 0-3 in the Big Ten. The final straw was a loss to bumbling Northwestern, which is the first consequential thing Northwestern football has done in years. I can say that because I went there. You can also say that, because it’s true! The dismissal itself wasn’t the big news, of course. Penn State remains on the hook for $45 million remaining on Franklin’s contract, which is the second-largest buyout in college football history after Texas A&M fired Jimbo Fisher in 2023 despite owing him $77 million. It’s just the third buyout to surpass $20 million, thanks to Gus Malzahn’s $21.4 million buyout when Auburn dismissed him in 2020. Make no mistake, contracts for college football coaches have gotten silly in recent years. Yet Franklin’s situation stands apart – because of the magnitude of the payday, because of his still very good 104-45 record (despite his 4-21 record against top 10 teams) and because he is the man who dragged Penn State out of Joe Paterno-related darkness and back into the light (he wasn’t always perfect at that, either). His firing is also still dominating the news cycle because it’s the first biggie of this new era of college football, in which schools are devoting funds not just to coaches’ salaries, but players’ as well. Franklin’s firing raises plenty of questions about the future of how athletic departments value coaches. Here are four of them. Will the revenue-sharing era change how coaches’ contracts are structured? Or, put another way: Do athletic departments want to spend on a coach, or buy a better roster? It’s a real question for a lot of schools that are already belt-tightening to afford keeping up in this new world. I wonder if bloated contracts with sumptuous buyouts might be curbed, on average. Will it change what characteristics schools value most in a coach? Did the influence of a superstar recruiter such as Franklin diminish the second schools were able to throw cash at players? That’s surely reductive of Franklin’s talents, but I do wonder whether the importance of a coach’s ability to attract talent has changed, now that money is directly affecting many players’ school decisions. How does playoff expansion affect the coaching carousel? There will be 12 teams in the College Football Playoff for the first time this year, meaning more coaches should be less inclined to bail on their team if a national title is, hypothetically, within reach (ahem, Curt Cignetti). Expansion might impact the pool of coaches willing and available to jump programs – which doesn’t mean coaches aren’t negotiating with other schools behind the scenes, but it does leave a school who fires a coach in October with seemingly fewer options. So, will coaches get fired less often? I have a definitive answer to this one: No! A bloodletting is in our future this season, despite everything I mentioned above. Schools have money problems? Well, that’s why the Big Ten is chasing $2 billion in private money. If a $45 million buyout isn’t keeping a school from firing a coach these days, I don’t know what will. | 
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