Well, it looks like that Florida State fan got his answer about Jimbo Fisher’s loyalty. Today, the Florida State coach decided to resign from his position as head coach of the Seminoles, where he won a national championship as well as two ACC titles. He has also decided he will be taking the head coaching position and Texas A&M University, previously held by Kevin Sumlin, who was fired earlier this week.
Honestly, can you blame the guy? He didn’t have a lot going for him at Florida State and is coming off what is his worst season at the helm for Florida State. He isn’t even sticking around for the team’s final game this weekend against Louisiana-Monroe. Kind of crappy I would say, but who am I to judge?
There was really no choice for him here. Rumors surfaced that if he were to stay put at Florida State, players would start lining up to transfer out of the program. He also was always held up to such a high standard ever since becoming the head coach following up the great Bobby Bowden. If he would have stayed, he would have been in Bowden’s shadow until the day he retired or was fired. Hopefully, he is making the right decision to pack his bags and head to College Station.
Fisher will be in charge of the Texas A&M football program, who recently has been one of the most mediocre teams in college football, at least for their standards. His deal will be worth around $75 million over 10 years. That’s a lot of money for a coach who just went 5-6 and was really just thrown out of a state where he was once beloved.
No matter how you put it, there is going to be a tremendous amount of pressure now that he is in the SEC West and at a school that is constantly a win-now program. He is also going to have to make this work for a couple years with less talent than he had at FSU.
Fisher is a good coach with a solid resume and will now have to navigate his recruiting throughout the state of Texas with rival schools such as Texas, TCU, and Texas Tech. He probably will never be able to pick up another recruit in the state of Florida seeing how everything just went down.
Personally, I think this is a good hire. He will be taking over a team that has a good culture around, and being the good recruiter he is, he will probably get a lot of great young recruits from the talent-filled state in Texas. However, will he be able to compete with the likes of Alabama, Auburn, and Georgia? That is something that will be quite interesting to see in the years to come.