When it comes to coaching buyouts, UCLA is among the top public Power 5 schools that have had to pay a large amount of severance to former football and basketball coaches.

While Bruin fans are well aware of the buyouts the athletic department has paid, UCLA is not the most notorious in this department. Although it is close.

AthelticDirectorU recently released its findings in regards to buyouts from 52 public Power 5 schools since 2005 (which you can read about HERE). Part of what was researched was that not only are more and more schools having to pay severance to former employees on a yearly basis but the dollar amount has dramatically increased since 2005.

In 2005, of the 34 NCAA financial reports ADU was able to obtain, it found that schools spent an average of $235,000 in coaches' buyouts. In 2007, that number dropped to $176,000. A year later, it rose to $293,000. In 2018, that amount shot up to $2.3 million.

ADU did factor in the increase in the value of coaching contracts, which directly leads to an increase in buyouts. As ADU put it, "The more it costs to hire coaches means the more it costs to fire them." UCLA fans know this all too well.

Since 2005, UCLA has fired three football coaches (Karl Dorrell in 2007, Rick Neuheisel in 2011, and Jim Mora in 2017) and two basketball coaches (Ben Howland in 2013 and Steve Alford in 2018). Relieving these former coaches of their positions has cost UCLA a total of $23,615,331 (the amount is only for 12 out of the last 15 years - ADU did not have data for 2011, 2016, and 2017), which ranks it 5th on ADU's Combined Football/Basketball Severance list behind Nebraska ($27,914,154), Auburn ($26,169,701), Florida ($25,335,787), and Kansas ($23,821,412).

When looking at the yearly average, among those 12 years reported, UCLA has spent $1,967,944, for both football and basketball. When looking at current numbers, ADU found that UCLA's spending on severance followed the trend of the 52 teams as a whole, and skyrocketed in the last two seasons.

Here are the severance numbers that were compiled by ADU in the year of or after (depending on the timing of the termination) of the five former UCLA coaches listed (coach in parenthesis): 2008 - $1,673,599 (Dorrell), 2012 - $728,587 (Neuheisel), 2013 - $4,062,021 (Howland), 2018 - $12,536,781 (Mora), 2019 - $3,909,542 (Alford). That is quite a significant rise, especially in the last two years. Looking back, it could have been worse when you consider Alford's contract.

Not to suggest that UCLA was at any point considering terminating Alford before they actually fired him, but if it did, UCLA would have had to buy out Alford for $10.4 million from 2013-16, $7.8 million in 2017, $5.2 million in 2018, and $2.6 million in 2019, per his contract. Those numbers were quite unusual, especially for a coach that did not sustain longterm success at a Power 5 school. This basically locked in Alford for several years, which is also becoming a growing trend with Power 5 football and basketball contracts.

ADU also put a laser pointer on UCLA's combined numbers for football and basketball, stating that it was only one of two schools, Auburn being the other, that had an average annual severance payment ranked in the top 10 in both football and basketball.

Now let us take a quick look at the programs individually, starting with football. In 2018, UCLA was on the hook for $12.5 million which was mostly due to the buyout for Mora. That was second among those schools tallied by ADU after Arizona State with $12.8 million for that year and was a big part of the total severance payments. For the 12 years of available data, UCLA football owed a total of $15,643,768, which has it just outside the top 10. If UCLA did not fire Mora, its total would be somewhere around $3.1 million.

By comparison, Florida, which tops the total amount of severance for a football program, has spent $24,891,148. That is not as bad, but not as good as Michigan State, Oklahoma State, Missouri, and Iowa who all have had to pay $0 in severance according to the collected data.

When looking at the annual severance payments in 12 of the last 15 years, as noted above, UCLA football is in the top 10 at 8th with $1,303,647.

Now over to basketball. UCLA did not pay as much to its former basketball coaches as it did its football coaches, though what it spent ranked it second in annual spending with $664,296. Alabama basketball topped the list with $681,461. In total (12 of 15 years of available data), UCLA owed $7,971,563, which also ranked it second among the public Power 5 basketball programs researched.

Again, when combined with football, that is a grand total of $23,615,331. That is quite a large amount of money considering that in the 15 years in which data was collected, UCLA only had 4 (out of 30 between football and basketball) conference championships, tournament championships excluded. Actually, the lack of more conference championships can explain why UCLA has had to pay so much to former coaches, but it also shines a light on the fact that UCLA made some bad coaching hires as well as bad contract negotiations.

By the way, those 4 conference championships since 2005 were all won by Ben Howland.