LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The University of Louisville will pay Chris Mack $4.8 million to take his ball and go home. The board of trustees and athletics association board approved a separation agreement with the basketball coach that will pay him $133,333.33 at the end of each month through January of 2025.
It also will pay for COBRA medical insurance benefits for Mack and his family through June of next year — for those of you worried about how he would get by on the previous amount.
And what will U of L get in return for all that money?
Hope.
If anyone asks you the cost of hope, you can tell them, it's a lot. They probably can't afford it, unless they're a university athletic department and can pay a football coach $14 million to go away or a basketball coach $4.8 million to stop losing games.
As one coach (still employed) said to me yesterday: "I'm doing it all wrong. I'm trying to win every game I can. The real money is in losing."
But here we are.
Some are going to call this a bargain. One involved in the process called the deal advantageous to the university.
But those who would deem this nearly $5 million settlement a bargain probably aren't trying to reconcile a budget in an academic unit, or if you're one of the U of L faculty and staff members whose raise in the coming year, is 1%. Don't spend it all in one place.
The combined boards spent more than 90 minutes debating the settlement, and interim athletic director Josh Heird said the reason is simple.
"Because a $5 million decision is a big decision," Heird said. "That's it, you know, I would expect anybody to discuss whether or not we're going to give any employee, anytime, just a shade under $5 million, that we have thorough discussion about it."
"There was conversation as to why the decision was being made," Heird went on. "And that's where you get into, deem them opportunity costs, right? I think that's a big number as you go into potentially next season, and the attendance is down and things like that. Once again, you go back to the student athletes and their morale, all those things. I just sound a little bit like a broken record, but we're going to take as much information as we have, make the best decision that we can and that's what happened in the room there."
Heird said the total amount owed to Mack to buy out the rest of his contract was $12.75 million, but that he and Mack began talking a couple of weeks ago about what would happen if the season didn't turn around.
Both Mack and Heird declined to say who initiated that talk. But both used the same language in saying that a change was needed for the good of the players. No U of L players were available for comment on Wednesday.
Heird said there was some thought of waiting out an NCAA decision on whether Mack committed Level 2 violations. If he were found guilty of that, the school could fire him for cause and pay nothing. But Heird said the school, which has "been given an idea" of the IARP process on its long-running NCAA infractions case, but did not feel a decision was coming very quickly.
"I think you look at everything in totality and try to make the best decision that you can," Heird said. "On one hand, you had $12.75 million at stake, if he was let go without cause. And I think we need to clarify that it's not $12 million, it's $12.75 ... And on the flip side, you consider and say it's $0. But it's not $0 either, right? Who knows how long that's going to go as far as the NCAA case. And I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to bet on the NCAA wrapping up anything quickly. So, that's why we came to terms that we did."
They decided that restoring hope was worth the time it might take to save $5 million, or a larger sum.
Depending on where the program goes from here, it was either a costly extravagance, or a small price to pay.
Either way, it corrected a mistake on the program's trajectory, and clears the way to move forward.
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