Texas A&M donors may wish Fisher would adapt his offensive philosophy or hire someone else to call plays, but unless they want to pool what amounts to the cost of a new football building, he doesn’t have to worry about their anger, either. But he doesn’t have to care because he’s basically untouchable. That number effectively makes Fisher the football equivalent of a Supreme Court justice for the next five or six years. If Texas A&M officials wanted to fire Fisher without cause after the regular season, they’d owe him an $85,950,000 buyout. Note that word “fully,” because it has to do all the lifting. He has all the leverage, thanks to a contract extension last season that fully guaranteed him an average of $9.5 million a year through 2031. Fisher certainly can make changes to improve the program, and he’ll almost certainly try to do that. And Fisher doesn’t have to listen to anyone in College Station if he chooses not to listen. The Aggies are beset by first- and second-year problems in Year 5. The offensive line seems perpetually young. And even though the Aggies’ recruiting rank surged in the class of 2022, the product on the field seems to be regressing. With Ole Miss, Florida, Auburn and LSU remaining on the schedule, 7-5 seems a fairly high bar to clear in 2022. Sumlin, who was fired after Year 6, was 39-16 in his first 55 games at the school and never finished worse than 7-5 in the regular season. Fisher is 37-18 in his career at Texas A&M. He is an offensive guru whose team has yet to score more than 24 points against an FBS opponent in 2022. Following Saturday night’s 30-24 loss at South Carolina, Fisher’s team is 3-4 this season. Jimbo Fisher is in the middle of his fifth season at Texas A&M. Some of the recipients might just as easily languish in mediocrity as compete for a national title. But Saban might be the only coach - I’ll entertain arguments for Clemson’s Dabo Swinney and Georgia’s Kirby Smart - who actually deserves the level of security that some schools have passed out recently. Handing out a fully guaranteed deal for double-digit years is fine and probably even sensible when the coach is Alabama’s Nick Saban. Across the country, schools have surrendered any leverage they might have had to their football coaches, and a few are already dealing with a fallout that could last for years with no satisfying resolution. In the past year, many of that AD’s colleagues have screamed “Hold my beer!” and then done deals with coaches that make everything that came before look downright sane. What matters is that ADs hadn’t even begun to lose their minds. It might have been Bret Bielema’s deal at Arkansas. It might have been Kevin Sumlin’s extension at Texas A&M in 2013. These things blur together, so I can’t even remember which contract it was. ![]() The topic was whatever mega-contract a football coach had just signed.
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