It was thought that Nebraska had been paying three current/former head coaches throughout the 2018 season. Instead, it was just two.
When Mike Riley was fired by the Cornhuskers in late November of last year, he was owed a buyout of just over $6.6 million that was to be paid in monthly installments of nearly $166,000 through February of 2021. However, Nebraska officials confirmed this week, the university paid Riley a $6.2 million buyout in January of this year that wiped the former coach off NU’s books.
Riley took a job at Oregon State shortly after his dismissal by Nebraska, with his $50,000 salary very slightly mitigating his buyout number.
“We went ahead and absorbed it [earlier this] year to get it behind us, and we felt that we had a good enough year revenue-wise that we could handle that,” athletic director Bill Moos said by way of the Lincoln Journal Star. “Those things, for the most part, are behind us, and we’re moving forward at this point.”
Bo Pelini, fired by the Cornhuskers in November of 2014, is being paid nearly $130,000 every month through February of next year to pay off his $6.54 million buyout. Riley’s replacement, Scott Frost, is in the first year of a seven-year, $35 million contract.