Whit was right to extend Fuente early after those two seasons. It was the right business move. Fuente originally signed a six-year contract. That means, for recruiting purposes, you need to extend or fire after three seasons (after 2018) or four seasons at most (2019). If Whit didn't extend him after 2017, he would have needed to extend him after 2018 or 2019. Certainly he hadn't done enough to get fired at that point. In fact, if you make the decision after 2019, it's an easy one: extension. At that point he had a better record over four years (three 8+ win seasons) than Beamer had over his final four seasons (one 8-win season), so he had improved the program, and we had everybody coming back for 2020 (except Bud of course). So, had no extension taken place after 2017, then one would have taken place after 2018 or 2019...in which case the buyout likely would have ended up being bigger when we did have to fire him in 2021. So extending him early was actually the right business move for VT. And then we got into "extend or fire" zone again, and we couldn't extend him, so we fired him. But because we made the extension decision early, there were fewer years left on the contract than if we had made the decision later, so the buyout was cheap. Pry also signed a 6-year contract, so we'll get into the "extend or fire" zone again after the 2024 season. Ideally you don't want to let the contract run down to under three years, otherwise it will hurt recruiting. Example: calendar year 2019, when we let that entire offseason go with Bud having just one season left on his contract. I started writing in January of that year that we needed to extend him ASAP (even if he didn't plan to return) or else it would kill defensive recruiting for the 2020 class. Guess what? It did. If VT had to fire Pry after 2024, then I assume VT would be on the hook for the remainder of the contract, which would equate to over $14 million in buyouts. Hopefully he does enough over the next two years to get extended. Of course, that opens up another discussion: what is "enough"?