Butch Jones, Jim McElwain and Jeff Long have all had the misfortune of being fired in the last month.



The positive of losing your job? All three will likely get millions in liquidated damages, more commonly known as a buyout. Butch Jones, who received a pink slip from Tennessee on Sunday, will receive $200,000 a month for the next 40 months -- $8.25 million in total -- only mitigated if he gets another job. Former Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long, forced out on Wednesday, will make $1 million a year through the remainder of his contract set to expire in June 2022.

It's the standard of doing business in college athletics though the buyout figures have climbed to astronomical heights. Twenty-six college football coaches, including five in the Southeastern Conference, have buyout figures of $10 million or more, according to USA Today Sports' salary database. Florida State would have to pay Jimbo Fisher, currently in the midst of a 3-6 season, nearly $40 million to leave.

Those large sums should only grow as rising salaries show no signs of a downturn.



"The Achilles heel of the entire operation is the buyout piece," said one industry source who has been involved in the hiring process for years. "It's the most vulnerable piece of the armor."



How did we get to this point? It boils down to some combination of revenue going through the roof especially from television rights, powerful agents wielding tremendous leverage and university leaders giving in to increasingly one-sided contracts amid growing desperation to find a winner.



**



After winning back-to-back SEC East titles, Jim McElwain appeared to be one of the more secure SEC coaches at the start of the 2017 season. Not only did he have on-field success, but his huge buyout ($12.9 million) made it near impossible to dismiss him after only three seasons.



McElwain publicly discussing death threats, that may or may not have existed, eliminated that security and played a role in his dismissal midway through his third season. Florida officials were strongly considering firing him for cause, according to reports -- it was announced as a "mutual parting" -- and will likely pay far less than his total buyout though McElwain is still expected to receive millions. It could prove to be a fortuitous break for Florida given the school would have likely been on the hook for his full buyout if it didn't fire him with cause; the only mitigating language in his contract was if he took another SEC job within 90 days.



Florida has been the SEC's trendsetter when it comes to buyouts and not in a positive way. There was no mitigating language in Will Muschamp's contract so when former AD Jeremy Foley fired him in 2014, Muschamp was owed the full $6.3 million. Florida still hasn't paid all of that sum -- the now-South Carolina head coach is still due $1.575 million. The school then spent $5 million -- $2 million of which was for a home game against Colorado State -- to get McElwain out of his CSU contract. Now, Florida will have to pay McElwain an undisclosed buyout, might have to pay another sum to buy out a coach's contract and still have to pay the actual salary for the new coach and his staff. Two unsuccessful hires with unfavorable contracts have cost Florida millions.



"Universities are getting in the business of not only paying coaches that they fire but paying the buyouts of coaches that they hire," said Martin Greenberg, a sports attorney who has represented coaches in negotiations. "This is a double whammy for education. You think about how much money we are wasting -- these schools are getting caught both ways."



UAB athletic director Mark Ingram, who recently went through the negotiating process with head coach Bill Clark, says it's standard for the school to want mitigation and the coach to not. He senses a lot of the outside criticism on buyouts centers on situations like the one at Florida.



"I'm paying the old guy, I'm paying the school that's not my school, and I'm paying the new coach," Ingram said. "Wow, that's an expensive change."



Florida AD Scott Stricklin seems to realize the danger that comes with an expensive buyout as he looks for the Gators' next football coach. During a press conference announcing McElwain's dismissal, Stricklin said he'd "love to see" a market correction on massive buyouts for coaches.



"I had an agent tell me recently I was 'Captain No Guaranteed Money,'" Stricklin said. "I think he meant it as a disparaging comment, but I took it as a compliment. ...There's a lot of leverage that successful coaches have, and that ends up setting the market, and then others who may not be quite as successful use where the market is to their benefit."



Stricklin's point perfectly encapsulates the biggest issue of the current buyout trend. There's little outrage over Nick Saban's $26.9 million buyout given all of his success in Tuscaloosa. It's hard to even come up with a scenario in which Alabama would ever have to pay that amount. Kentucky coach Mark Stoops' $14.765 million buyout, however, raises some eyebrows given his 26-33 record in Lexington though the Wildcats are on an upswing. LSU's contract with Ed Orgeron, which includes an $8.79 million buyout if fired this year, could be the SEC's most egregious given there was zero competition for his services.



And even that pales in comparison to the most famous example in Charlie Weis who one source described as "Exhibit A of the lunacy of intercollegiate athletics" after he made more than $24 million in buyouts from Notre Dame and Kansas. When you add that number to his salary at both schools, he earned $64.5 million for a career college record of 41-49. The Jayhawks have won a total of four games in the three-and-a-half seasons since Weis left a smoldering heap of a football program behind in Lawrence.



Contracts like the one Kansas gave Weis, and other more recent ones can have far-reaching implications. With some Power 5 schools giving out bad contracts like candy, both for head coaches and in increasing occurrence for assistants, it sets an unrealistic market and puts undue pressure on schools of all sizes including those at lower levels. Nine Group of Five coaches have buyouts of at least $4 million with Wyoming's Craig Bohl (21-27 record at school) leading the way at $9.4 million, equivalent to 25 percent of the athletic department's total revenue in 2015-16.

"The biggest effect of the trickle-down effect is the impact it's hard on smaller universities, smaller conferences where the revenues aren't where they can afford this as a business expense," said Greenberg who also serves as an adjunct professor at Marquette Law School.





**

There are plenty of agents who represent college coaches, but no one is as revered and powerful as Jimmy Sexton.



Before the 2017 season, Sexton represented an astonishing nine SEC head coaches though three (McElwain, Jones and Hugh Freeze) have already been fired. Sexton has landed massive deals for his clients including Alabama's Saban, but the college athletics world still views him as a fair negotiator. Sexton's affable personality and style make everyone feel good when they leave the negotiating table even if his client gets the upper-hand most of the time. He personally represents two of the top five coaches with biggest buyouts in college football.

Sexton's expansive client list at Creative Artists Agency ensures big-time schools are going to have to deal with him when looking for a new head coach. At Florida, he was involved in both the firing (Muschamp) and hiring (McElwain) in 2014 which included the multiple buyouts. He's represented the last four Tennessee head coaches (Jones, Lane Kiffin, Derek Dooley and Phillip Fulmer) at his alma mater which has generated criticism.



"I don't hire the coach. I've never hired a coach," Sexton told ESPN in a 2015 profile. "Contrary to what people might believe, I never hired a coach at Tennessee."



The most significant advantage Sexton has, according to industry sources, is knowledge. He represents so many different coaches that he's the most plugged-in man in America when it comes to hirings, firings and negotiations. He uses that knowledge to power his negotiating strategy which gives him an advantage more often than not over athletic directors without his Rolodex or negotiating experience.

"The agents are just trying to make it better for their clients," one industry source said. "Do they hype the system and maximize it? Yes, they do. If an agent is sitting there and a coach is being fired, he knows everything that is going on. He knows how to negotiate and understands where the leverage points are. That's a salute to his opportunism."

Sexton and other agents benefit from schools desperate to find a winning coach. In the SEC, 25 coaches have been fired since Alabama hired Saban in 2007. The 13 schools not named Alabama are all looking to replicate the success the Crimson Tide has had over the last decade, willing and eager to pay top dollar to try to knock Saban off his pedestal. That desire has given agents tremendous leverage in negotiations, knowing the school is under significant pressure to succeed and usually willing to make significant concessions to get a top candidate signed up including no mitigation clauses in case of a firing without cause. They know that skyrocketing television revenue -- SEC schools made approximately $40 million each in 2016 off TV and radio rights -- has given schools the confidence to commit major money on coaching salaries.

Skilled agents will play up the competition for a coach's services, real or imagined, to drive up the price. The person making the hire -- oftentimes the athletic director -- too frequently doesn't have the contacts and skills to see through the smokescreens.

Once the school is on the hook, agents can push for the buyout to be salary times years of contract, putting schools in a dangerous financial position given the average salary in the SEC this year, not including Ole Miss' interim coach, was $4.2 million. In increasing fashion, schools have acquiesced to the substantial demand.

"On one hand you are negotiating with the devil," Greenberg said, "because he's going to come back and get you some other way because he has the coaches that you want."

Three SEC jobs are already open, and two more could soon join the mix if university leaders are willing to stomach large buyouts. Arkansas, likely to move on from Bret Bielema now that Long is out, will have to plunk down a $5.87 million buyout. Texas A&M faces an even worse financial hit if it moves on from Kevin Sumlin: $10.4 million and it's unclear if any of that can be mitigated.

With potentially five or more SEC jobs open, there will be stiff competition for a pool of candidates that could struggle meeting the lofty expectations attached to many of those jobs. Schools like Florida and Tennessee expect to be annual national championship contenders and have traditionally paid coaches accordingly, whether warranted or not.

However, the demand is higher than the supply of transcedent coaches, meaning huge paydays for all the coaches hired -- and inevitably fired -- this offseason. Better start saving for those buyout payments now.

John Talty is the college sports editor for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @JTalty.