After Brian Kelly was fired from LSU, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry vowed that the next coach would have a “patently different contract.” 

Lane Kiffin’s contract with LSU is patently different than Kelly’s—but seemingly not in the way Landry originally wanted. Kiffin’s buyout appears to be even larger. And unlike Kelly’s, it’s guaranteed.

Kiffin, who boarded a plane to Baton Rouge after a messy exit from Ole Miss on Sunday, has signed a seven-year, $91 million contract with LSU, according to The New Orleans Advocate. Only Georgia’s Kirby Smart is known to make more with his 10-year, $130 million contract.

If LSU fires Kiffin without cause—the vast majority of firings, even for poor performance, are without cause—the school would owe Kiffin 80% of his remaining salary. The contract also does not include an offset or “duty to mitigate” clause. That means Kiffin would not be obligated to find another job, nor would his salary from his new job offset whatever LSU would owe him.

In other words, the school has agreed to pay Kiffin 80% of his contract no matter what. If Kiffin were fired tomorrow, the school would owe him $72 million, with no recourse. If they were to fire him after next season with $78 million left on his contract, he would be owed $62 million. And so on.

LSU has also reportedly agreed to pay Kiffin’s buyout for leaving Ole Miss, which is $3 million.

Kiffin’s agent, CAA’s Jimmy Sexton, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The offset and mitigation clauses are common (Brian Kelly had one at LSU) but not universal (Mark Stoops didn’t have one at Kentucky) and can save schools tens of millions of dollars. James Franklin had an almost $50 million buyout at Penn State. But because he had an offset clause, he agreed to take a $9 million lump-sum buyout before taking a new job at Virginia Tech. Texas A&M famously did not have an offset clause for Jimbo Fisher, who is owed $75 million from the school while he works as an ACC Network analyst.

After Kelly was fired in October, Gov. Landry went on a press tour criticizing Kelly’s buyout and vowing to ensure the next contract would be different. (Landry said that the football contracts were coming out of the state budget; they are funded by private donors and athletic department revenues if needed.) Athletic director Scott Woodward departed in the fallout from Landry’s comments.

“I think that everyone is in agreement. … The next coach that we hire is going to have a patently different contract,” Landry told Pat McAfee shortly after Kelly was fired. 

During another interview, he floated the idea of assigning more of the contract toward performance-based compensation, rather than guaranteed money. Kiffin does have a major incentive in his new contract: a bonus if he wins the national championship that would make him the highest-paid college football coach in history. LSU has also agreed to pay this season’s postseason bonuses in Kiffin’s Mississippi contract.

Landry’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new contract or to clarify his involvement in the negotiations.

Kiffin has been fired several times before. Raiders owner Al Davis called him a “professional liar” when he fired Kiffin in 2008; USC notoriously fired him at an airport after his team hit rock bottom in 2013; Nick Saban fired him as offensive coordinator at Alabama before the national championship game in January 2017.

Meanwhile, LSU has agreed to pay the full $54 million after Kelly filed a lawsuit against the school. LSU will owe Kelly less if he finds another job. 

The athletic department is also still paying off the multimillion-dollar buyout for Kelly’s predecessor, Ed Orgeron.

The $8 billion casino dreams of Mets owner Steve Cohen and his partners are coming true.

The facility location board of the New York State Gaming Commission on Monday formally and unanimously recommended the license approval of Metropolitan Park, the casino complex Cohen is aiming to build adjacent to Citi Field, in partnership with Hard Rock International.

The final approval decision will lie with the full gaming commission, and that decision will be rendered later this month. The facility location board’s recommendations, however, hold significant sway, and deviations from that are not expected. 

In addition to Metropolitan Park, the facility location board unanimously recommended that downstate gaming licenses be granted to Bally’s, which plans a $4 billion resort complex at Ferry Point in the Bronx, and to Resorts World New York City, which proposes to build at the site of the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. The trio comprised the final three candidates for the coveted downstate gaming licenses after a series of other competing proposals dropped out during earlier stages of a lengthy review process. 

“The board has determined that awarding all three licenses best advances the state’s long-term economic, fiscal, and community objectives,” said board chair Vicki Been.

Each of the three bidders, once fully approved, will need to pay an upfront licensing fee of $500 million, commit to another $500 million in capital improvements, and pay annual taxes on the gaming revenue.

Those recommendations were not without some controversy, however. The public disclosure of the facility location board’s findings was immediately greeted with loud “Shame on you!” chants from opponents of expanding the state’s casino presence. 

The expansion of casino gambling in the state, however, is expected to become a significant revenue generator, and those economic and job development considerations won out over concerns regarding potential spikes in crime and community degradation. 

Big Vision

For Metropolitan Park, the recommended approval is also aimed at elevating an underdeveloped area marked by surface parking lots and car repair shops. The project is targeted to include a hotel and casino, 25 acres of green space, playgrounds, a 5,000-seat indoor music venue, a rebuilt transit hub, and a locally inspired food hall, among other amenities.

“After years of community engagement and support, Metropolitan Park is one step closer to becoming a reality,” said project spokesman Karl Rickett. “Following a fair, transparent, and rigorous process, the Gaming Facility Location Board has validated the positive economic impact this project will have.”

Most recently, Cohen, Hard Rock, and the city of New York resolved a dispute with the neighboring U.S. Tennis Association, in part by further codifying existing protections for that organization and the US Open. 

Metropolitan Park is slated to open in June 2030, with construction beginning next month. It will follow recent upgrades to Citi Field and the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, as well as the ongoing construction of Etihad Park, the forthcoming home of Major League Soccer’s NYCFC.

Sinclair Inc.’s proposed acquisition of rival local television station owner E.W. Scripps Co. is quickly becoming a hostile situation.

Just days after the Maryland-based Sinclair, owner of Tennis Channel and 178 local stations, proposed its combination with Scripps, the Ohio-based owner of 60 stations and Ion, adopted a poison pill designed to thwart the deal. 

Scripps has approved a limited-duration shareholder rights plan, lasting for one year and ensuring that its shareholders “receive full value in any connection with any proposal to acquire the company.” The plan will issue a dividend of a share right for each outstanding share to shareholders of record as of the end of business on Dec. 8, with that right becoming exercisable if an acquiring entity gains at least 10% total equity in Scripps.

Scripps is also offering shareholders the ability to buy additional stock at a 50% discount if the company is acquired by an unapproved party.  

As of last week, Sinclair already held 9.9% of Scripps, so any additional share purchases by it would trigger the plan and dilute the stake of Sinclair or any other hostile bidder. 

“The rights plan is intended to protect shareholders from coercive tactics and to provide the board with time to thoroughly evaluate the [Sinclair] offer and any other potential strategic alternatives,” Scripps said in a statement.

The standoff highlights the very different perspectives that Sinclair and Scripps have on the situation. Scripps clearly views the unsolicited offer as an unwelcome one and has quickly taken this series of moves to prevent it from happening. Sinclair, however, previously said that it was having “constructive discussions” about the merger, and that the deal was urgent given the heightened need for greater scale in a rapidly changing media business. 

Given the blunt reaction from Scripps, however, at least some of those sentiments appear to have been overstated. 

“We believe the strategic and financial rationale of a potential Sinclair-Scripps combination is indisputable,” Sinclair said in a statement. “Given the family control of Scripps, the only effect of adopting a poison pill is to limit liquidity opportunities for public shareholders of Scripps.”

Sports Impacts

Even as Main Street Sports, formerly Diamond Sports Group, is its own entity and no longer under the Sinclair umbrella, sports would remain a core element of any pact with Scripps. The Ion network owned by Scripps reached a multiyear extension of its rights deal with the WNBA this past June. 

The Scripps sports portfolio, meanwhile, also includes rights to the NWSL, the Big Sky Conference, and local rights to a handful of pro teams, including the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers, the Golden Knights, the Mammoth, Lightning, and defending WNBA champion Aces. With these pacts, Scripps has been at the heart of a broader resurgence for sports in over-the-air television.

Sinclair’s bid for all of Scripps follows a separate, $6.2 billion deal between Nexstar Media Group and Tegna Inc., which is still undergoing regulatory review.