[CTcard]

Clearly Dawkins is saying that he  believes that was the agreement.

...
So it is clear that Dawkins is saying the mitigation clause was waived, in which case the structure of the subsequent employment contract wouldn't matter to Dawkins. There are other good reasons that Dawkins may have accepted a back-loaded contract.

For the most part, this was rather BC's point (I think).

Dawkins is clearly now saying that Stanford agreed to waive the mitigation clause.
The question, presumably, is whether that is true.
One piece of evidence that it might not be true is if it was on Dawkins initiative that he and UCF backloaded his contract so severely. That might be an indication that he was trying to avoid losing much due to the mitigation if he thought it was still active. Of course there might be other reasons as well, as you note, and presumably that is why

Stanford said it attempted to ascertain information about the motivation behind the structure of Dawkins’ contract with UCF.

In addition, as also pointed out, one wonders what Stanford's motivation would be to both pay Dawkins the full value of his remaining contract and drop the mitigation clause. One reason might be that Dawkins has some kind of dirt on Stanford, which I think is the same thing as your comment that "it may have been in return for the "hold harmless" agreement from Dawkins that had value to Stanford".
Another might be that Stanford didn't do so. 

[CTcard]

Clearly Dawkins is saying that he  believes that was the agreement.

...
So it is clear that Dawkins is saying the mitigation clause was waived, in which case the structure of the subsequent employment contract wouldn't matter to Dawkins. There are other good reasons that Dawkins may have accepted a back-loaded contract.

For the most part, this was rather BC's point (I think).

Dawkins is clearly now saying that Stanford agreed to waive the mitigation clause.
The question, presumably, is whether that is true.
One piece of evidence that it might not be true is if it was on Dawkins initiative that he and UCF backloaded his contract so severely. That might be an indication that he was trying to avoid losing much due to the mitigation if he thought it was still active. Of course there might be other reasons as well, as you note, and presumably that is why

Stanford said it attempted to ascertain information about the motivation behind the structure of Dawkins’ contract with UCF.

In addition, as also pointed out, one wonders what Stanford's motivation would be to both pay Dawkins the full value of his remaining contract and drop the mitigation clause. One reason might be that Dawkins has some kind of dirt on Stanford, which I think is the same thing as your comment that "it may have been in return for the "hold harmless" agreement from Dawkins that had value to Stanford".
Another might be that Stanford didn't do so.