If CJF is ultimately let go, WHEN becomes a financially important question. But the more I've thought about this, the less advantage there is in waiting for any incremental drop in his buyout.

Let's take an extreme comparison: CJF gets fired BEFORE 12/15/19 ($15 million buyout) vs. CJF gets fired AFTER 12/15/20 ($10 million buyout) ... a $5 million difference.

Now let's take that $5 million difference and assume any buyout is paid out evenly across 5 years, so now we're talking a $1 million per year difference in waiting for what some may say is the inevitable. And this is assuming he doesn't work any job in the next 5 years where his pay would be subtracted from his buyout.

We should obviously wait for his buyout to drop to save $1 million per year on the expenditure side, right? Not so fast...


On the revenue side, let's assume a generic 6 home games per season. That $1 million per year expenditure difference works out to be $166,667 per home game.

If we assume a $50 ticket per game, that $166,667 per home game difference = 3,333 fans. And this isn't factoring-in money spent on concessions, parking, per-seat donations just to get each ticket, etc. So realistically, fewer than 3,333 fans would account for that $1 million per season, $166,667 per home game buyout expenditure.


So if you're leaning toward CJF not being "the guy," the question really becomes this: would our ticket sales and attendance drop by more than 3,333 fans if we decided to keep CJF? (the break-even threshold is much fewer fans than that, as noted above)

If not, and if we kept our current sales/attendance, then it makes sense to hang onto CJF as his buyout drops.

But if you think we'd lose a couple thousand fans per game next season and beyond with CJF at the helm, then even a $5 million difference in his buyout is essentially negligible when compared to the lost revenue of a fan base growing more disinterested with each loss.


I think CJF is a good guy personally, but may not be the coach we need for the job going forward. So if you believe this will be his last season, it makes sense to wait until 12/15/19 to let him to go at least save the first $2.5 million incremental buyout drop - but it would be dumb to balk at the $12.5 million buyout at that point if it would mean losing even a couple thousand fans in 2020.