Brent Pry, fired three games into his fourth season as the head football coach at Virginia Tech, will be the new defensive coordinator on the staff of the new Tech head coach, James Franklin.
Has this ever happened before?
Um, no.
I’ve submitted a Freedom of Information Act request with Virginia Tech to get a gander at the term sheet for Pry, which should be revealing.
Pry, under the terms of the six-year deal he signed ahead of being hired back in 2021, was to be paid $5 million in each of the 2026 and 2027 seasons – with a buyout, in the event that he was to be let go ahead of the end of the deal, at 70 percent of his salary for 2026 and 50 percent of his salary in 2027, so, a total of $6 million.
ICYMI
That $6 million would be subject to an offset for what he would be paid at a new job, which, as it turns out, will be back at Virginia Tech.
I doubt that I’m the only one curious how Tech Athletics would want to handle owing the new defensive coordinator $6 million over the next two years.
Tech Athletics is strapped for money as it is; the five-year contract for Franklin, which will pay him an average of $8.2 million a year, is seriously backloaded, paying him $6 million in 2026, $5 million in 2027 and $4 million in 2028, before jumping to $12.75 million in 2029 and $13.25 million in 2030.
I seriously doubt that the new term sheet for the recently fired and now rehired Pry will just offset the mid-six-figure salary that he’d be set to get to be on Franklin’s staff from the money owed to him.
They’ve got to be working out some kind of new deal wherein Pry accepts a reduced buyout from the head-coach contract, don’t they?
Pry obviously has a long history with Franklin; he worked on his staffs at Vanderbilt and Penn State before taking the job at Virginia Tech, where his teams were 16-24 over his three full seasons and the 0-3 start to the fourth.
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Chris Graham
