I researched this during timeouts of the Vikings game tonight and I wanted to share what I found. All of my links are on tabs on my phone, so I'll share the source but you'll have to find your own links if you wish.
From a June 3, 2022 Pioneer Press article by Andy Greder
- Johnson has a 1 year rollover extension go before the Board of Regents
- If approved (it was) the financial terms of Johnson's contract won't change - the salary, nor the scaled termination fees.
- Johnson signed a 5 year $9.75 million dollar contract in March 2021
From a April 28, 2021 Pioneer Press article by Andy Greder
- Potential raises for Johnson fall under the AD's discretion
Coyle "The reason we added this to the agreement was because our finances- we are not sure what the long term impact of COVID-19 will continue to be so our goal was to protect the institution as much as possible".
- Regent Steve Sviggum said Johnson's buyout is "skillfully negotitated" and there would be no buyout paid if coach Johnson were to find a "comparable" position including head-coaching or assistant job in the NCAA.
- Given the language in previous coach Pitino's contract, Minnesota paid none of Pitino's $1.75 million buyout because of a similar clause.
The above is all sourced material, below will be my thoughts:
Unless Johnson got an undisclosed raised, which would be possible given Coyle's quote, the absolute maxium the buyout could possibly be would be $1.95 million times the 3 remaining years on Johnson's contract. Given that after his first year, compensation was still reported at $1.95 million to the regents for the extension, Ben would have had to have been given a raise of nearly $200K a season sometime during or after the '22-23 season which seems incredibly unlikely.
The original contract called for Johnson buyout to be reduced to 75% of base salary by this time (and decrease to 50% on April 30, 2024). Given that the way the contract was worded (how many seasons he had finished, not how many seasons he had left) and given this was called a "rollover" in the Greder article, I would heavily lean towards Johnson's buyout being 75% of base salary as opposed to 100%. A Marcus Fuller article before the start of the year contended that Johnson's buyout was amended to 100% of base salary through this year and that seems to be either what Shama has seen or read in the contract as well.
"Base salary" is often not total compensation in coaches contracts. Ben's base salary could be all of that $1.95 million or a portion of that with the remainder coming in other forms of guaranteed compensation (sometimes hosting school sponsored camps or the coaches portion of an apparel deal or radio show appearances etc). So like Ben's base could be 1.4 and the other other $550K comes from these other areas.
Regent Sviggum's comment is obviously the headline. We had a poster come here previously (I believe in the Fuller thread on this same issue) who stated he knew about there being no real buyout. I am not an attorney, much less an expert in contract law but it seems like the Regent is suggesting that Ben has to seek employment if terminated and it's not simply an offset clause. If that were the case, taking an assistant job (likely under $300K unless he's the top guy on a high major staff) wouldn't really make much of a dent. However this part of the contract was written might be more important that any reported dollar figure.
that would be sold.
