Ohio State has reached an agreement with former men’s basketball coach Randy Ayers on a buyout for the final two years of his contract.Ayers will receive $637,353 from OSU in two installments.The buyout of Ayers’ contract includes loss of endorsements and other benefits, said Athletics Director Andy Geiger. Ayers’ base salary was $142,000, but radio, television, apparel and camp contracts would have brought him another $200,000 annually.Ayers’ wife, Carol, and his attorney, Michael H. Carpenter, were next to Ayers in Carpenters’ downtown office to announce the settlement. ”You’ve got to go on. I don’t want to be in a state of denial the rest of my life. I’ve got to do what is healthy for my family and that’s to pick up and go on,” Ayers said. “I am not in hurry right now to do anything.”Ayers said that since the firing he has taken a vacation with his wife and two children and will take his time in determining where to go next.Ayers said he has visited with Charles Barkley of the Houston Rockets and Jim Jackson of the New Jersey Nets since his firing.”I will sit down and look at my options,” Ayers said. “I am open to the college game or to the NBA.”Ayers said he has talked with officials at George Mason University about the vacant coaching position at the school, but he did not comment specifically on any other job.Geiger said Ayers represented the university with “dignity and in a very professional manner for 14 years.” “I am pleased we were able to reach this agreement with coach Ayers,” he said. “I think this is a fair resolution.”At least one of Ayers’ former players agreed that the settlement was fair.”I definitely feel he deserved it; he deserved it all,” said OSU forward Shaun Stonerook. “If they honored the contract he would have gotten the money anyway.”Ayers was fired March 10 after a second straight 10-17 record that left him at 124-108 for his career with the Buckeyes. Former Boston College coach Jim O’Brien was hired to replace him on April 2.In his eight years as head coach Ayers compiled a record of 64-80 in the Big Ten. Ayers spent 14 years at Ohio State as either the head coach or as an assistant. Ayers led OSU to the No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament in 1991 and 1992 and won the Big Ten title twice.Ayers’ early success had little to do with his abilities as head coach, said Jeff Brown, a junior majoring in physical therapy.”He had most of his good years with Gary Williams’ players,” Brown said. Williams, now the head coach at the University of Maryland, coached the Buckeyes before Ayers and was Ayers’ boss.The university should not be responsible for compensating Ayers’ endorsement losses, Brown said. The endorsements should be extra.The buyout does not include a requirement that Ayers reimburse OSU for money earned in a subsequent coaching job.Neither does the deal reached with former OSU women’s basketball coach Nancy Darsch, who was fired on the same day as Ayers. She reached a cash settlement on Friday. The deal paid her $165,000 for the remaining year left on her contract. Her base salary was about $115,000.Large settlements are a trend in big-time athletic programs across the country, said Sy Kleinman, a professor in the school of education policy and leadership.The salaries awarded to new head coaches have been climbing and so have the settlements arranged with the fired coaches.When Gary Moeller was fired as the University of Michigan’s head football coach in 1995 he received a settlement of $399,688, although his contract read that all terms would be nullified if the coach were fired for just cause. Moeller was fired after an incident in a bar. Moeller later admitted that he was intoxicated and made embarrassing statements. His settlement included credits for insurance, retirement and other benefits.”When someone is fired I think it is the intention to make it as clean a break as possible. In order to do that they pay the price, in this case, several hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Kleinman said.