It will only cost your favorite college football team $2 million to hire Lane Kiffin after 2018

Lane Kiffin’s reputation rehabilitation tour will continue at Florida Atlantic University in 2018, and another Conference-USA championship could lead him back to a Power 5 head coaching job. The Owls aren’t exactly making it difficult for him to leave.

FAU locked its mercurial head coach in to a 10-year contract after his 11-3 debut in Boca Raton, but that pact won’t tie Kiffin down for long. If a needy team comes calling to hire him away after the 2018 season, the buyout owed to the university is just a paltry $2 million — and it gets even lower the longer he stays. From Underdog Dynasty:

The buyout clause is $2 million should Kiffin leave for a new school at the end of the season. The same buyout amount under Chun. The buyout drops to $1.5 million after the 2019 season and $1 million after the 2020 season.

That contract quirk highlights how meaningless the length of Kiffin’s contract is. The former USC and Tennessee coach, knowing he’s a top candidate to be poached once his value has been sufficiently restored with a Group of 5 program, created a navigable course back to a high-profile job and a raise from the $950,000 salary he’ll get at FAU this fall.

That $2 million is a pittance compared to other buyouts across the college football landscape. Kiffin’s buyout is tied for 65th-highest among Division I coaches, according to data collected by USA Today. That ties him with other rising sideline stars like... UConn’s Randy Edsall and Kansas State’s Bill Snyder. It will cost $38 million more to dislodge Dabo Swinney at Clemson than it would to pry Kiffin from Florida Atlantic. 26 coaches currently have a buyout at least five times larger than Kiffin’s.

Those massive buyouts are sigils of job security, but that doesn’t mean they don’t backfire. It cost Arkansas $11.9 million just to fire Bret Bielema after five seasons of mediocrity. Arizona’s state university system spent more than $18 million just to prevent Rich Rodriguez and Todd Graham from coaching at their institutions of higher learning.

Florida Atlantic won’t have to worry about that, but it seems they won’t be able to hold on to their high-profile head coach for long. 2018 is shaping up to be another strong year for FAU. Bill Connelly called the Owls “far and away your C-USA favorite” in his preseason preview, predicting a nine-win regular season in Boca. Another big performance would shoot Kiffin back to the top of 2019’s coaching candidate ranks at major programs across the country.

And it won’t be expensive for a struggling university to make him their culture-changing head coach for ‘19 and beyond.