Gators pay record $5M for coach

The University of Florida has some serious faith in Jim McElwain.

In order to score the Colorado Statecoach, the Florida Gators will pay the largest buyout ever given to another school in college football history.

Florida said Thursday that it would pay CSU a total of $5 million -- $3 million in cash over six years and another $2 million to play a football game in Gainesville in the near future.

McElwain will pay $2 million on his own to make for a total buyout of $7 million.

The Gators' total eclipsed the previous school-to-school record of $4.375 million that the University of Texaspaid Louisvillelast year for Charlie Strong ($4.375 million).

McElwain's payment of $2 million is also the largest amount that a coach has ever paid to buy himself out of a contract. The previous record was held by Rich Rodriguez, who paid $1.5 million to the University of West Virginiato get out of his contract and take the job at the University of Michigan.

McElwain's $7 million buyout is seven and half times the average buyout paid by a school to another school over the past three years. Of the 21 buyouts that were public over that time period, the average buyout was $935,786.

For a total of $6.93 million, schools bought out the contracts of Gus Malzahn, Hugh Freeze, Kevin Sumlin, Gary Andersen, Bret Bielema, Chris Petersen, Sonny Dykes, Craig Bohl, Dino Babers, Tim Beckman, Dave Clawson, Darrell Hazell, Dave Doeren and Tommy Tuberville.