Texas A&M Couldn’t Afford to Fire Jimbo Fisher, Even If It Wanted To
Last week, the Texas A&M Aggies suffered one of their most embarrassing defeats of recent memory as the Appalachian State Mountaineers took them down on Kyle Field, 17-14.
The final score wasn’t indicative of the actual game, as A&M was essentially dominated for 60 minutes on their home turf.
App State won the turnover battle 2-0, which is always a massive advantage and also outgained A&M 315-186 in total offense, holding the ball for an impressive 41:29, compared to that of A&M’s time of possession of 18:17.
When Texas A&M hired Jimbo back in 2018, he was fresh off a 5-6 season at Florida State, but prior to that he had won double-digit games six of the last seven years. His record with the Seminoles was 83-23 (78.3%) and he had brought them one national championship and made one College Football Playoff.
Since arriving in College Station, Fisher hasn’t had a single double-digit win season and has taken the Aggies to just one New Year’s Six Bowl. This is especially cringe-worthy when you consider that Texas A&M’s chancellor, John Sharp, presented Fisher with an undated national championship trophy when he was hired…
Since then, Fisher has gone 35-15 and the “12th Man” is starting to get a bit restless without anything to show for their investment in their head ball coach. So, what if A&M decided that it was time to move on and find a new leader for its program?
According to an excerpt from a recently published article from The Athletic, Jimbo won’t be going anywhere for a long, long time.
“Unless a few Aggies boosters have around $85 million in liquid assets they can live without, Fisher’s seat is going to remain ice cold for many more years,” Stewart Mandel writes. “Just last year, A&M took his original 10-year, $75 million contract from 2018, added an extra four years to take it through 2031 and upped the annual average salary to $9.5 million starting in 2022.
“The entire contract is fully guaranteed. So were A&M to fire him after this season (it won’t), he still would be owed nine more years of salary. No program in college football history has tethered itself so tightly to a coach who has yet to deliver even a division championship. But that doesn’t mean his time there will be pleasant if the Aggies continue to move backward since peaking at 9-1 in 2021.“
That is a tough place to be for Aggieland, but that’s the price of business. Unfortunately, the road for A&M gets much tougher down the stretch as they will face No. 13 Miami this week, followed by games against No. 10 Arkansas, Mississippi State, and No. 2 Alabama. That is just their schedule through the second week of October, so they’d better get something figured out on offense if they hope to keep their 2022 hopes alive.
