Several people have e-mailed me over the last few days to ask what it would cost UNT to buy out Todd Dodge and his assistant coaches. Now that I have a few minutes and the contracts in front of me, here's the situation.

If UNT decides to go in another direction, it could reassign Dodge and pay him his base salary, plus the benefits that apply to that new position.

That would be pretty expensive. UNT pays Dodge a base salary of $185,000 and gives him a raise of five percent a year. The last time we went through this, there was some question as to whether that five percent is added to the base salary and thus would up the amount UNT would have to pay if it reassigns Dodge. It is my understanding that the additional salary is kept in a separate category in the contract. In that case, UNT would be on the hook for $15,416 a month as long as Dodge is around.

Here's the interesting part. If UNT flat out terminates Dodge, it would have to pay him his base salary for the duration of the contract. The out appears to be a mitigation clause that says that Dodge has agreed to mitigate UNT's financial obligation by trying to find comparable employment as soon as possible. UNT's financial obligation would be "reduced or cease to the extent of such mitigation."

The blog's lawyer friends can probably help me here, but I would take that to mean that if Dodge found a job as a high school coach or college assistant for $100,000, UNT would only have to pay the difference between the $100,000 and what his base salary would have been at UNT, which with be $85,000. Dodge still has two more years on his deal, but that would make the cost easier to cover.

UNT would also be on the hook for some money that would go to assistant coaches who one would assume would be out the door with Dodge. There is always the chance that a new coach would hang on to some of the old guard. I still think UNT would have been smart to hang on to Kenny Evans and Eric Russell the last time around.

The way the contracts are written is that UNT would be on the hook for three months salary for each coach or their base salaries until the end of their contacts that expire on Feb. 28. That leaves UNT pretty well protected. One would assume that a new staff would not be in place and drawing a paycheck until sometime in late December. Let's say for the sake of argument that the school only has to pay the contracts of its old assistants until they expire. The overlap when UNT is paying its old assistants and its new assistants is say two months, which seems pretty reasonable.

UNT's entire staff of assistant coaches makes $721,000 a year. If you pay all of those guys two months salary, that comes to $120,000.

The same mitigation clause is in each assistant's contract. Meaning guys who wouldn't be on the market long would have part of their salaries come off the books when they landed with new staffs.

That clause further cuts into the cost of getting rid of UNT's assistants.

Just for the sake of argument, let's look at it this way: Dodge is a Rick Villarreal guy. I have a hard time believing UNT would flat out fire Dodge and take the risk of torching its bridges with all of his friends in the high school coaching business in the state. I don't think UNT wants to keep him around either, so both sides cut a deal to pay him a parting gift of $250,000 and then is on the hook for $100,000 at the most to assistant coaches who are leaving with Dodge.

That comes to around $350,000.

The other scenario is UNT reassigns Dodge to a fund-raising/lawn mowing position that gives him some time to figure out what he wants to do/wait for the right high school job to open. Say it takes him two months to find the right gig that pays him $90,000, thus leaving UNT on the hook for ballpark $30,000 until he leaves and $95,000 a year for two years to pay the difference between his base salary at UNT and what he is going to make a Podunk High.

UNT is still on the hook for $220,000.

Those totals don't sound that bad, but that doesn't count what it would cost to hire a new head coach. UNT would surely want to go with a proven commodity at that point, and that is going to cost a whole lot more than the ballpark $285,000 it is paying Dodge now. Plus, UNT would probably want to go with experienced college assistants across the board who would run $80,000 to $100,000 each. That could push UNT's assistant coach budget up a hundred thousand dollars or more.

I don't think UNT is sitting on that kind of money, so it would have to get the cash to buy out Dodge and get a proven head coach from boosters or the university until the new athletics fee kicks in during the fall of 2011.

That could be problematic since UNT had to the same thing when it parted ways with Darrell Dickey and a lot of those same people kicked in for the stadium.

Bottom line, if UNT and Dodge part ways, it could be expensive in addition to being painful.