Not every coach signed the same year Collins was hired got 6 years. Louisville did due to the train wreck Petrino left. Almost all others were 5.
Talked to a guy who heads one of the main executive search firms for coaches and ADs two nights ago at my house. Said the 7 year contract was stupid and not necessary. Also said we are in a tough situation because we don't have the money to compete these days. For the record, we discussed Pastner and he likes (not loves) him. Agreed with me that Pastner "gets it" regarding the fans, his image, press conferences, etc. and Collins just doesn't. Said Pastner is a good guy and really wants him to succeed. Basically said no one else in the country was hiring Collins so why did they give him a 7 year deal. He would've crawled to ATL for the GT job. Stansbury got jobbed (my words, not his).
At this point, I don’t think anything I write is going to change your mind. I do appreciate the insight from your executive search buddy.
I did check the major P5 coaches hired in 2019. Mack Brown stood out as not having six years or more, but the other major candidates I looked at had 6 year contracts. I didn’t include Bowling Green or other smaller schools.
I don’t have a relationship with Stansbury. From what I saw, he wanted time for his hire to make a transition, and so made a contract that made Collins “safe” for four years. He did that. From the buyout perspective, this is a 4 to five 5 contract.
From the perspective of locking a coach in at an affordable salary for 7 years, it’s a 7 year contract. Stansbury got something he wanted at the time.
I’ll split this into two topics—1. the results we got vs 2. what we were seemingly trying to achieve with the contract.
If I were an AD, I’d have expected a 2019 of 3 or 4 wins. With the amount of returning production, that wasn’t going to be good. For 2020, I’d have expected lower bowl eligibility or barely missing a bowl — somewhere between 5-7 or 7-5. The shellacking by Clemson and the lopsided losses to Pitt and BC and Syracuse were signals. If it had been a normal “non-COVID” year, I’d have intervened last year. Even with it being a COVID year, I’d have looked into why we fell apart then.
I’d be stunned if Stansbury didn’t expect a good bit more wins and a better looking team by this point. For all talk of “progression” we’re the second-weakest team in the ACC, salvaged by Duke declining rapidly.
They made some adjustments to fix timeout and game management issues, but those haven’t worked all that well. We’ve had some progress on offense, but not enough. Defense has pulled in more talent at some positions, but has regressed.
Back to the contract, though—if Stansbury was going to lock in a tighter contract, the thing to do would have been to have the buyout step down after year 3 instead of year 4. Looking back, if he doesn’t wish he had done that, then most fans do. Looking ahead though, the contract was written so that they’d have time to get a plan fully into motion and working. In 2018/19, when he signed the contract, he got a contract that made his recruiting-savvy coaching hire safe for 3 full recruiting cycles. The contract looking forward looks a lot better than it does now.
So the contract is designed to give Collins 3 full recruiting cycles to get “higher rated” recruits in and playing. The funding for support services goes with that plan. It’s also designed to lock in an affordable coaching salary for an extended period. It does that.
Where it falls down is that it’s designed to accommodate a couple of painful years while we become a competitive or better team, while we’re currently not showing progress towards becoming that competitive team, and the couple of painful years have been far more painful than they should have been. Stansbury didn’t foresee even a below average transition being this far behind.
