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Urban Meyer’s lawyer must be tweaking Ohio State contract

January 15, 2015

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On Monday night, Ohio State (or as some call it, The Ohio State University) defeated Oregon to claim the national college football title. It should have been a lucrative day for OSU coach Urban Meyer, who has one of the richest contracts in college sports. But surprisingly, it was not.

There was no bonus in his contract for winning the national title, according to Forbes. Undoubtedly, his lawyer is working on revising that, while Meyer gets the tattoo he promised his players he’d get if they won.

No need to feel sorry for Meyer, however. He received a $250,000 bonus for taking the Buckeyes to the championship game. And, he earned a $100,000 bonus plus an automatic one-year contract extension for winning the Big Ten title, according to Forbes.

But the opposing coach actually could have made out better, had the Ducks won. Oregon’s Mark Helfrich received $150,000 for making the title game, and would have received $250,000 for winning it. That’s on top of the $410,000 he’s already earned in other incentive payouts, like $200,000 for winning 12 games and $100,000 for winning the Pac-12 championship.

Clearly, college football coaches have some very smart negotiators on their side. Hear what Meyer said after OSU’s win.

Author

  • Micheline Maynard

    Micheline is a contributing columnist at the Washington Post concentrating on business and culture. She has written about flooding in Detroit, tainted water in Benton Harbor, nationwide shortages of restaurant staff, and vaccine hesitancy.

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