Mike Holder Got His Guy, But Was the Ford/Underwood Trade a Great Deal?

Mike Holder badly botched the Travis Ford hiring (and re-signing!). Like, “wait a second, Joe Wickline is gone and the cupboard is completely empty on the offensive line” levels of botched.  It was atrocious, and it was a black cloud over the entire athletic department.

But then, like GOB from Arrested Development, Holder made the whole thing disappear and reignited a fan base in the process. It was a whirlwind, and it was impressive.

But was it a great deal?

We’re going to do some #Math here so stick with me because it might not be pretty.

One month ago, OSU owed Travis Ford $7.8 million. That’s $600K for the rest of the 2015-16 school year and $7.2 million for the three years after that. They gave him $3.9 million and called it a day. Then they gave Brad Underwood a total of $3.3 million for those three years. That’s $7.2 million total.

Underwood’s buyout at SFA was $250K, and he was making about $30K a month which means OSU probably piled another $350K on top of the $7.2 million in which case they’re still saving $250K because they owed Ford $600K for the rest of this season.

I told you there was #Math. But look closer …

Ford’s old contract stated that he would be paid $7.2 million for the next three years less what another school paid him. St. Louis was paying its old coach $860K so for the sake of argument let’s say they gave Ford $900K a year (details have not been released that I know of). Over the next three years, OSU would have owed Ford $7.8 million less $2.7 million which is $5.1 million paid out over three years.

So OSU presumably saved itself ~$1.2 million by negotiating to pay Ford off early. But if you consider the investment potential of a $3.9 million lump sum (due May 23)[1. $3.9M invested at 10 percent, compounded annually is …. $5.2M.] it doesn’t look quite as pretty as people would suggest (although I’m not sure Oklahoma State investing large sums of money in the present day for future deals is the greatest idea either).

But here’s the thing. You would, as an athletic department, probably have paid money on top of Ford’s massive salary to have gotten rid of the Ford Cloud and gotten a (hopefully) better coach. And you somehow managed to do it for more or less the same amount you owed Ford anyway.

Did Holder get lucky that Underwood struck it big right when he most needed him and that there is precedent of no coaches from SFA’s conference making the leap to the Big 12 so he could be one of the lowest-paid coaches in the Big 12? Yes he did.

But he still changed the trajectory of the second-most important organization on OSU’s campus and didn’t spend a dime more than he would have if Ford was still around.