Buyout payback
Nice (non)work if you can get it
If a newspaper is a fine meal—meat and potatoes on the front page, veggies in the local/state section, with a sip of wine from the comics page that tickles your nose—then the Sports Section is dessert. And no, we don’t mind if you eat your dessert first.
This week’s “Look Martha” news story came from the Sports Section. Surely somebody brought it to your attention, even if your name isn’t Martha.
The Texas A&M college in that other, inferior state to our southwest has fired its football coach.
The university is going to pay him around $77 million to leave.
Now that’s wanting somebody gone. The Aggies are 6-4 this year and just beat the brakes off Mississippi State on Saturday night. Yet the powers that be at ATM fired Coach Jimbo Fisher on Sunday morning. (Beating Mississippi State didn’t apparently matter.)
Jimbo Fisher was recruited away from Florida State after he coached his way to a national championship there 10 years ago. But his A&M teams have gone 27-21 in the SEC West since. That didn’t stop the school from extending his massive contract after the 2020 pandemic-shortened year when his team won nine games.
According to the contract and the wire story about said contract, Mr. Fisher is owed the “entirety of what remains on his deal—regardless of whether he gets another job in coaching—a staggering buyout that is more than triple the largest known given to a fired head coach.”
About a quarter of what he’s owed— about $19 million—is due within 60 days. The athletic director of the college told the press that the nonprofit paid for by donors will take care of the initial bill.
“We will use unrestricted contributions within the 12th Man Foundation for the first one-time payment and the athletic department will fund the annual payments for the remaining portion by growing our revenues and adjusting our annual operating budget accordingly.”
One wonders if “growing our revenue” is AD-speak for raising ticket prices.
In what can only be described as a moment of clarity, finally, in these coaching contracts, the athletic director of A&M said the school had to “learn a lesson” from Jimbo Fisher’s contract. Because the finances involved in cutting him loose are “monumental.”
Good for him. Maybe other colleges will learn this lesson, too. But that’s doubtful. Apparently no matter how many kicks from the mule, those chasing college sports success don’t learn.
When the Aggies gave Jimbo Fisher that fully guaranteed contract in 2017, the parties held a press conference in which the school introduced the new coach to fans—complete with a national championship trophy made up just for him, with the date not filled in yet. Because, of course, he would bring them to the promised land! Surely. Certainly. Matter of time.
And apparently the Football Gods were watching.