Actually Meyer has an explicit out for three schools that he can designate each season. Right now those three are Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State. So he can go there without any buyout being required.
As a die hard New Mexico fan I am torn about Meyer leaving Utah, on one hand My Lobos would finnaly be able to win the Mountain West, but on the other hand I love the fact that it was the Mountain West that finnaly blew up the BullS@#t BCS. And I would love to see Utah do it again next year. New Mexico is a couple of years away from being able to do it.
I also think Willingham is getting the shaft on this deal, next year the Domer's would be sitting pretty.
Actually, I believe the buyout was meaningless anyway. Willingham reportedly had a $6 million buyout. Meryer, given that it's Utah and he wasn't a top tier coach at the time, supposedly only has a $500,000 or $600,000 buyout. That's peanuts to a big time program. A winning program is worth a fortune, even to the Irish that already has a TV deal.
As an example, back in '02 during Ty's first year, the school sold 150,000 of those green shirts, and this was for charity...one shirt is designed for charity fundraising each year at ND and all of the proceeds from the sale of "The Shirt (above the production costs) go to charity. Remember, there are only 8,300 undergrads at ND and a couple thousand grads, yet they sold 150,000 of the green shirts alone. In normal years they would sell 20,000 or so. A winning coach means huge money to ND, so even if they had to pay the Utah buyout fee, it's pocket change.