Nick Saban, and Alabama, has made it tough on SEC Coaches as now many of the other fan bases expect the same results as Alabama seems to get each year. While it's a real pressure cooker for a lot of Coaches such as Sumlin these days none of them are going to be suffering too much as most of them have good enough salaries and buy out clauses in their contracts that will leave them well compensated for years to come.
Actually if you think about it given the salary and what most coaches like Auburn's Gene Chizik $7.55 million in monthly installments over the next four years. When Auburn fired Tommy Tuberville in 2008, it owed him $5.083 and he was then making 3 million a year I believe. Kevin Sumlin's contract I believe is said to pay him over 15 million if they fire him so for Coaches, especially in the SEC, getting fired isn't such a bad thing in fact if any of us got a check for just their buyout we would be set for the rest of our lives as if we won a lottery jackpot from 6 numbers.
So let's not have too much sympathy for them we expect miracles and looks like we pay them miracle worker salaries. I know Butch Jones (Tennessee) got a half million dollar salary increase last summer, at least that is what I heard. Heck almost sounds like (except for maybe Texas or Florida) the coach of the States main University Football team is likely the highest paid employee in the state. So yes the stresses and demands upon a coach are astronomical so are the benefits they get. Heck Chizik may have been Saban's enemy come November each year but when you think about it all these college Coaches owe Nick Saban a great deal given him and Alabama have set standards for College coaching salaries that have benefited most all College coaches and Tommy Tuberville gets credit for establishment of huge golden parachute buyout clauses that many schools award.
How many scholarships (not football mind you since those are set by the NCAA) could just one of those buy outs have funded for students to the University? No wonder you have these coaches smiling ear to ear when they get one of the SEC jobs, at least in Alabama and many other SEC states.
College Football is a BIG BUSINESS but then Football, College or Pro is big business. Just ponder for a moment that in Atlanta the Falcons got a huge new 1.5 BILLION dollar stadium built next to a multi million dollar stadium that was in itself state of the art and very modern. Same with the Braves baseball team leaving a fairly new, nice, beautiful stadium in downtown Atlanta for a newer stadium in North Atlanta's suburbs closer to where most of the players live and closer to the high dollar neighborhoods. Actually the dollar amounts just amaze me and it's crazy.