Texas A&M set to fire Jimbo Fisher? Sixth-year coach would be owed more than $75 million in buyout
Texas A&M set to fire Jimbo Fisher? Sixth-year coach would be owed more than $75 million in buyout
University regents reportedly met during an executive session ahead of a Week 11 game vs. Mississippi State
EDIT: Baffling journalism professors everywhere, the headline asked a question that could be answered "Yes." Aggies pulled the trigger.
Just happy that at least one fanbase believes they have it worse than mine. I do have to wonder if the 51 points yesterday changes anything, or if that was an undercover "interim bump".
Oh snap, this moved fast. Clicked on the article and the headline has been updated to:
Texas A&M fires Jimbo Fisher: Sixth-year coach owed more than $75 million in record college football buyout
From the article:
"After very careful analysis of all the components related to Texas A&M football, I recommended to President [Mark] Welsh and then Chancellor [John] Sharp that a change in the leadership of the program was necessary in order for Aggie football to reach our full potential and they accepted my decision," said athletic director Ross Bjork in a statement. "We appreciate Coach Fisher's time here at Texas A&M and we wish him the best in his future endeavors."
Aggies associate head coach Elijah Robinson will serve as the team's interim coach for the remainder of the season.
Something tells me they don't really "appreciate Coach Fisher's time here at Texas A&M"
The buyout will get all the headlines here, understandably so because of how big it is. But the payout is structured as x% over a certain number of years (I'm too lazy to google it right now), so it really shouldn't have too much of an impact overall. A&M's boosters have famously deep pockets.
My postmortem take is that while it's earlier than I expected, it feels like the right call. A&M paid a ton of money for essentially no improvement over our previous coach (Jimbo's SEC record was 56%, Kevin Sumlin's SEC record was 52%). Too many times I was watching games this season and I had to remind myself that this was Year 6 in Jimbo's tenure, not Year 1 or 2...every season feels like a rebuilding season, every game feels like we're playing for the moral victory, and the mantra always feels like we're waiting for next year. Those that follow the A&M program know this is the same old story it's always been, and Jimbo was hired specifically to change that and he hasn't. Sure we've had bad luck with injuries and other teams in our division are good, but at some point those excuses have to start going away if you want to be a good football program.
We've got some really talented players that I'm sure are disappointed and frustrated right now. It will be interesting to see how many of them light up the transfer portal and how many stick it out. Either way, we're probably stuck in rebuilding seasons again for the foreseeable future.
So I guess I'll bring this up here. As a coach for a different sport, I also see coach turnover. For scandal, office politics, age, coaching carousel etc. But one thing that large and ingrained (read successful) programs often manage is a transition coaching period. Where either a standing coaching staff member or a brand new replacement comes in and over the course of a few seasons (up to a a year or two) things are handed off behind the scenes before the old head coach leaves. Would that be possible in NCAA DI football? Would it be helpful?
That's interesting. So instead of being fired on the spot, the old coach would stay on during the year-long transition? I feel like that would take a pretty large change to how D1 football works now but it's definitely an interesting thought. Does the old coach stay on as an analyst or something? And what if after being fired they want to find a new job and move on?
Any chance we can get Kiffin there? They were made for each other!
It would be funny after all the highly public shit talking Kiffin lobbed at Jimbo this season if Kiffin essentially sold out and became the very thing we was against. Personally I don't see it happening...Kiffin's got a great thing going in Oxford and the A&M job doesn't feel as appealing right now. But I've been wrong before, so who knows.
I have to think that at this point, Lane is kind of in the Leach-zone where the top programs just don't want to deal with him, but he's going to continue to throw press conference bombs and win more games than he should.
