SAN JOSE, Calif. — So Jim Harbaugh has a contract that makes him the Stanford football coach through 2014.

That doesn’t mean he actually will coach the Cardinal for the next five years. It doesn’t even mean he’ll be the coach Dec. 31 when Stanford plays Oklahoma in the Sun Bowl, though the likelihood of that happening grows daily.
When it comes to the Stanford-Harbaugh marriage there are no guarantees — contract or not.
“Contracts are basically ’pre-nups,”’ Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour said. “If either party decides they no longer want to be part of the relationship, what are the exit fees?”
In the world of college sports, coaching contracts have more escape routes than the Underground Railroad.
Daniel Fitzgerald, a Connecticut sports lawyer, says of coaches, “They’re free agents.”
At least it seems that way. Coaches are constantly looking for greener paydays, and a contract doesn’t often stop them from moving on. And neither does loyalty.
Brian Kelly had a $1 million buyout when recently leaving Cincinnati for Notre Dame. He didn’t even wait to coach the undefeated Bearcats in the Sugar Bowl. Kelly’s home was egged, and his former players reacted bitterly.
Stanford fans held their breath last week when reports circulated that Kansas was seriously wooing Harbaugh. Next month is likely to bring more of the same when the NFL jobs come open.
At a news conference last Sunday to announce his three-year extension through 2014, Harbaugh declined to guarantee that he would be Stanford’s coach in 2010.
“Nobody has promised that,” said Harbaugh, 45. “I’m not going to write anything in blood on a stone tablet.”
Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsy says contracts are more binding for the schools than coaches. That may well be when the coach is a hot property like Harbaugh.
But schools have the leverage when hiring the hundreds of others trying to gain a toehold in the profession.
Situations such as Stanford’s create a false perception of the marketplace, according to Russ Campbell, a Birmingham, Ala., lawyer whose coaching clients include Arkansas’ Bobby Petrino and Auburn’s Gene Chizik.
Of the 16 vacancies at the top-level schools this season, only three involved a coach moving up the ladder — Kelly to Notre Dame, Butch Jones to Cincinnati and Turner Gill to Kansas. Almost all of the others were forced out.
“The reality is the rank-and-file coaches do not have the upper hand,” Campbell wrote in an e-mail. “As long as schools stay quick on the trigger to show coaches the door when they are cold, coaches will continue to look for better opportunities when they are hot.”
And that’s where buyout settlements enter the picture. Many schools have tried to soften the blow of losing a coveted coach by including both positive and negative incentives in the contracts. In simple terms, many agreements include longevity bonuses and annuities for staying but also conditions for coaches to pay “liquidated damages” if they leave.
When Cal re-negotiated Jeff Tedford’s contract in 2007, it included a series of bonuses that include a $1.5 million payment if he’s still coaching the team through 2011 and another $1 million if he completes the contract in 2013.
Harbaugh’s deal also has rewards for staying, Bowlsby said. But it doesn’t include a buyout clause if he goes. Even so, penalties typically are not severe enough to discourage coaches from leaving: The $1 million didn’t keep Kelly from taking the Notre Dame job.
It did, however, help West Virginia recoup $4 million when Rich Rodriguez breached his contract to coach at Michigan two years ago. The school took the unusual step of suing its former coach. In a settlement reached last year, Michigan agreed to pay $2.5 million of the buyout. Rodriguez is paying the rest.
San Jose State athletic director Tom Bowen, who announced the hiring of a new football coach, Mike MacIntyre, last week, said buyout clauses matter for mid-major schools such as his.
“It gives you protection from being picked apart, in all sports, not just the major revenue producers,” he said.
But buyouts can cut both ways. For instance, Notre Dame must pay Charlie Weis a reported $18 million to “fire” him.
Such expenditures have become a flashpoint for the escalation of spending in college sports.
A USA Today survey in November showed that at least 25 college football coaches earned more than $2 million this year — nearly double the number of two years ago. The newspaper also reported that the average head-coach salary in the 120-school Football Bowl Subdivision is $1.36 million per year, an increase of 46 percent the past three years.
The numbers are staggering considering the financial pressures universities face during the current recession. Cal’s Tedford made $2.8 million at a time when the UC system was slashing budgets and raising tuition costs to deal with a $21 billion shortfall.
In Texas, the faculty is furious that football coach Mack Brown recently got a raise from $3 million to $5 million.
Ted Leland, a Stanford athletic director for 14 years, said coaching contracts are symptomatic of college sports’ move away from the high-minded values of amateurism. He described athletic conferences as entertainment cartels whose primary job has become negotiating lucrative TV contracts.
Leland, now an administrator at the University of the Pacific, said college presidents understand the liabilities of exorbitant coaching salaries, “but few believe the NCAA has any answers. Personally and professionally they feel impotent to change the trend.”
Bowlsby doesn’t see the paradigm shifting any time soon.
“It is hard to ’unring the bell,”’ he said. “What we have is what we are likely to have to live with.”