As games wrap up over the weekend, Steve Berkowitz of USA Today is tweeting updates on the bonuses of coaches around major college football.
Most of them are pretty standard, and this weekend his tweets were dominated by coaches and their bonuses for reaching bowl eligibility, much like this one.
However, Berkowtiz's tweets related to the bonuses earned by UConn head coach Randy Edsall were a bit more unique. UConn is 1-6 to start the year. You see, unlike his counterparts, Edsall (who is in his second stint leading the UConn program) has some very specific game incentives worked into his deal for events like scoring first in a game, winning the turnover margin, having more tackles for loss then his opponent, and finishing with a better red zone efficiency.
The collective bonus for doing those things against USF Saturday isn't huge at $8,000 ($2,000 for each one), but just having those things worked into a contract when most incentives revolve around things big-picture goals like APR, bowl eligibility, making it into the top 25, making the college football playoff, is rather interesting.
Berkowitz notes in his article that Edsall "unusual contract arrangement provides up to $150,000 in incentives" if UConn were to reach any arrow of single-game or season-long statistical benchmarks, and has collected $24,000 for the season so far.
So far, Edsall is the only coach in college football that Berkowitz has tweeted about with those strangely specific in-game bonuses, and one has to wonder if that starts to become a trend among coaches when negotiating their contracts moving forward. I have a hard time seeing this become a trend, but could see some top-level coordinators taking certain jobs and one side wanting incentives for having a top 5 offense in the country, or the top rushing defense, or something along those lines especially if those stats can be proven to A) put seats in the stands and/or B) prove to lead to wins a majority of the time.
This will be an area that I, for one, will have an eye on as the next batch of head coaching contracts are negotiated and shared.
Stay tuned to The Scoop form the latest.