The 2022 college football season is barely a month old and it’s already breaking records—for coaches getting fired. 

A year ago, the sport saw an unprecedented three coaches from the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top half of Division I, lose their jobs during the first five weeks of the season. With the firing of Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst on Sunday night, five coaches, all from the five most powerful conferences, have been fired by the same point of 2022.

The quick firings come at a high cost: The five universities owe their former coaches a total of nearly $57 million in buyout money. But with so much money percolating through college athletics, schools desperate for wins can afford to spend freely to bring change.

The moves reflect the backwards economic logic of college sports: As long as the money isn’t permitted to flow from schools to athletes, it has to be spent somewhere. Hiring a good coach—or firing a bad one—is seen as one of the most sound investments an athletic department can make.

However, it’s created a system where football coaches who fail spectacularly can earn millions. They just need to sign a massive contract that guarantees a substantial portion of their salary, then lose games until boosters become irate enough to write checks. 

Back in 2019, Florida State set a high water mark for the industry when boosters ponied up about $20 million to fire coach Willie Taggart after he went 9-12 in less than three seasons. The total amount owed to Taggart was later negotiated down, after the coach got a new job at Florida Atlantic. 

Even with the mitigation, Florida State essentially paid two football coaches equivalent salaries during the 2020 fiscal year. Federal tax filings show that Taggart made $3.498 million to stay away; Mike Norvell, his successor, made $3.53 million after taking a voluntary pay cut to the $4 million he was scheduled to make during the pandemic.

Firing coaches is increasingly becoming the norm because universities can afford it, said Amy Perko, chief executive officer of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, an advocacy group that aims to reform inequities in college sports.

“It is irresponsible spending,” Perko said. “With some of the media contracts that have increased and the expectation of an expanded [College Football Playoff] schools are spending money now that they know they’re going to get later.”

The Southeastern Conference’s annual television revenue is primed to balloon to more than $800 million beginning in 2024 and the Big Ten Conference just signed a historically large television deal of its own worth approximately $7.5 billion over seven years. The Big 12 and Pac-12 Conferences are actively renegotiating their television deals and all conferences will see a financial windfall once the College Football Playoff expands to 12 teams no later than 2026.

As a result, coach salaries—and their buyouts—have increased to mind-boggling levels. There are now nine football coachings making more than $8 million per year, according to USA Today. During the 2021 fiscal year, public universities paid out more than $84.7 million to fired coaches, according to Knight Commission data. That’s nearly a threefold increase from the $32.3 million spent on buyouts in 2015, the first year of the College Football Playoff.

Nebraska fired Scott Frost on Sept. 11.

Photo: Steven Branscombe/Getty Images

Of the five 2022 firings, some were expected, or even overdue in the eyes of alumni. Nebraska restructured coach Scott Frost’s contract rather than fire him after a 2021 season in which the 3-9 Cornhuskers lost each game by less than 10 points. The university cut Frost’s salary to $4 million from $5 million and made it significantly more affordable to fire Frost without cause after the first month of the season, slashing his buyout in half from $15 million to $7.5 million.

The money-saving maneuver ended up not mattering: Nebraska fired Frost on Sept. 11.

At Arizona State, Herm Edwards was fired after Week 3, a move that came as the program awaited the results of an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations begun in June 2021. Members of Edwards’s staff allegedly contacted recruits and hosted them on campus in 2020 during a period when NCAA rules forbade such interactions due to the pandemic.

Edwards had survived an offseason purge in which Arizona State parted with both coordinators and several assistants. But he didn’t last long in the new season. The end finally came on Sept. 18 after a 30-21 loss to Eastern Michigan.

Other dismissals were the product of dismal performances on the field. Georgia Tech fired Geoff Collins as well as athletic director Todd Stansbury on Sept. 26 after a 1-3 start. Colorado dismissed their 0-5 football coach Karl Dorrell on Sunday.

Then there’s the perplexing, but illustrative, case of Wisconsin, which installed defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard as interim coach after firing Chryst on Sunday. Although the Badgers lost to Illinois on Saturday to fall to 2-3, Chryst had previously guided Wisconsin to a bowl game for seven straight seasons, winning six of them. His 67 wins are the third-most of any Badgers coach.

According to his contract, which was extended to 2027 earlier this year, Chryst was owed $19.5 million if fired without cause. His payday was negotiated down to $11 million, according to a spokesperson for Wisconsin athletics. 

One of Chryst’s strengths at Wisconsin might have also led to his undoing. Across seven seasons in Madison, he never fired a defensive or offensive coordinator—but saw three of them hired away by other teams. Two went on to become head coaches: Dave Aranda at Baylor, after a turn as defensive coordinator at LSU, and Justin Wilcox at California. 

Arizona State fired Herm Edwards after Week 3.

Photo: Darryl Webb/Associated Press

With so many marquee programs already looking for head coaches—and more bound to be by season’s end—Wisconsin’s athletics leadership feared that Leonhard could become the fourth poached coach. Like Chryst, Leonhard is a Wisconsin native who walked on to the Badger football program and became a three-time All American—exactly the type of candidate the university would one day want as head coach. 

Athletic director Chris McIntosh said on Sunday that he made the personnel change because he felt the time was right. Instead of begging Leonhard to stay come December, Wisconsin gave him a seven-game runway to earn the job permanently.

“We are fortunate to have Coach Leonhard here on staff,” McIntosh said.

Write to Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com