CECIL HURT: Is no-buyout clause a bad thing for UA?

It’s one of the more famous quotes of Nick Saban’s Alabama tenure to date, made in reference to recruits who commit to Alabama but continue to cast a longing eye elsewhere.

“You shop, we shop."

On Thursday, the question became whether Saban’s signature on a contract with no buyout clause meant that he might be more likely to shop himself some day.

The answer? Not necessarily.

Clearly, Saban didn’t want a buyout clause in his contract and, just as clearly, he and his agent, Jimmy Sexton, weren’t about to sign anything they didn’t want to sign. So if he elects to do so, Saban could walk away from Alabama without having to pay (or, to be frank about it, without a prospective employer having to pay) a dime as a parting gift.

So did Alabama get railroaded in the deal? After all, commitment is a nice concept but nothing cements a relationship like cold, hard cash. But it’s also true that not all relationships are created equal, not when you are dealing with coaches who have achieved, for want of a better term, “rock star" status.

The fact is, any suitor who wants to come after Saban is going to have to come with a wheelbarrow full of money. That whittles the field down to the top 20 or so college programs, and the teams of the National Football League.

So exactly how much of a buyout would a team like that find daunting? A million dollars? Two million? Three million? If today’s headlines had trumpeted that “Saban Deal Includes $3 Million Buyout," would Alabama suddenly be more secure?

By the way, $3 million is a huge buyout. Look at the contracts awarded to other coaches of similar stature to Saban. Urban Meyer at Florida is one of the hottest names in the game, and ESPN reported on May 31 that Meyer’s buyout is $150,000. Steve Spurrier is another coach on the Saban plateau. South Carolina recently doubled his buyout (partly in response to rumored Alabama interest in December) so that Spurrier would have to pay $500,000 per year remaining on his contract. So he’d have to void almost the entire deal to reach that $3 million mark.

It’s doubtful that Saban wants to return to the NFL. It may be doubtful that any NFL owners are currently interested in bringing him back, although a couple of championship seasons may wipe away any lingering memories of his Miami tenure in the mind of a desperate owner.

But you can rest assured that an NFL team wouldn’t bat one of its billion-dollar eyelashes at a $3 million buyout as the price of doing what would be a $30 million or $40 million deal.

Bobby Petrino went to the Atlanta Falcons despite a $1 million buyout in his deal at Louisville (a buyout that was put in his contract, not at the insistence of Louisville athletics director Tom Jurich, but at the request of Petrino himself).

It’s the same thing with a college team. Think of Alabama as an example. If UA officials were willing to pay Saban $32 million, would they have been willing to go to $35 million, if the deal depended on it. Maybe, maybe not, but we are already talking stratospheric numbers here, so I’d lean to “maybe."

So even a mammoth buyout clause isn’t a security blanket against the sort of suitors that a coach of Saban’s stature would attract.

Now, a $3 million buyout would, in case it had to be invoked, mean that the University of Alabama would get $3 million. And $3 million is better than nothing.

Take it from me -- I have nothing, and $3 million would definitely be better.

But would it be worth breaking the deal with Saban to insist on its presence?

There was a time when the UA Board of Trustees insisted adamantly on having a big buyout clause in a coach’s contract. It was an issue in Dennis Franchione’s contact extension (which was never signed). It was an issue in Mike Price’s contract (which was never signed). But could Alabama afford to make it an issue in Nick Saban’s contract, with the possibility of a parenthetical (never signed) looming over that document as well?

No one is going to sit here and argue that an employer is better off with no buyout clause than with one. But is Alabama -- which didn’t have a lot of leverage -- better with a signed contract, and a calculated risk that Saban will stay? Or would it be better off with an ongoing, contentious negotiation that would buy no real security in the end?

The answer seems pretty obvious.

Cecil Hurt is sports editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Reach him at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0225.