What You Might Not Know About the $7.2M Left on Travis Ford’s Contract

My dad emailed me about this after I mentioned it briefly on Thursday. I figured if he was in the dark about, you might be too. Pops is pretty locked in to the OSU hoops scene.

Anyway, the number that keeps getting floated around is that Oklahoma State owes Travis Ford $7.2M. That would be $2.4M each season for the next three seasons. OSU hasn’t paid him $2.4M every season (that would have been a $24M contract instead of $20M) but the way his contract is set up, it’s backloaded so he receives more at the end than the beginning.

Anyway, yes, this is what Oklahoma State owes Travis Ford. They are contractually obligated to transfer $7.2M to his bank account over the next three years.

However, there’s a caveat that will lessen the financial burden on OSU (as far as I can tell — I’m not a lawyer). I know Pokelahoma has been banging this drum for a few weeks so I did feel obligated to post it.

Here it says OSU must pay Ford monthly until the end of his contract:

And here it says OSU owes Ford everything it owes him (i.e. $7.2M) but that that amount is lessened by whatever he makes at his next job. And that he must start looking for work (and reporting back!) right away.

The key phrase is: University’s financial obligation under this Contract shall cease or be reduced commensurately by the amount of any such income.

So this means a couple of things. First, if indeed OSU pays Ford monthly, it will do so at a rate of what it owes him less what he makes at a future job. If he coaches Tulsa next year for $1M then OSU owes him $1.4M, not $2.4M.

More likely what this means is that a lump sum will be negotiated at far less than $7.2M because Ford knows he can get reasonable work that pays a lot and will not want to send Mike Holder a freaking monthly report on how that’s going.

So there you go.

If you’re a lawyer, feel free to tell me what I got wrong about this in the comments.