True, however somehow you never hear about athletes worried about a coach getting poached. In our situation it's way more likely that Leipold is poached than we let his contract expire and don't re-sign him.
I think kids aren't naive enough to believe the contract matters. If the coach does well he rips it up, if he does poorly, the university rips it up.
I think that messaging is solely targeted to ADs, because you negotiate a 5 year deal, then 2 years later are told you have to extend or you'll lose recruits, and if the coach is bad, you can't let him crash your fan base for an entire Undergrad cycle, thus every deal is effectively only 2-3 years but the buyout is always 5 years.