It appears that Houston has had enough.
The Cougars' football team has a lot of success to celebrate from the past decade-plus, but the one thing that has always come back to bite them is their head coaches leaving for other schools in Texas. Art Briles left back in 2007 for Houston, Kevin Sumlin left back in 2011 for Texas A&M, and finally Tom Herman left for Texas at the end of the 2016 season.
Houston is finally taking some drastic measures to prevent that.
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Football Scoop revealed the contract details for new Houston head coach Major Applewhite, and even the savvy coaching website described the contract as "unlike any we can remember".
From Football Scoop:
Applewhite's personal buyout spikes by 50 percent if he leaves for another school in Texas. This means it's theoretically possible Applewhite could leave after this season and wind up owing $9 million plus his assistants' buyouts on a contract that only — "only" — paid him $7.5 million in the first place.
That's right, Houston put a contract kicker in Applewhite's deal that increases his buyout cost by 50-percent.
This is clearly a reaction to Houston continuously losing their valued head coaches to in-state rivals, and it's honestly a genius idea. We have no idea if Applewhite will become the commodity that Briles, Sumlin, and Herman all became, but this at least gives Houston some protection against creating another head coach that they will later have to compete with if he becomes too successful and leaves the program.
