Fisher signs huge contract; takes on new challenge with A&M
All those zeroes in Jimbo Fisher’s new contract hang over the coach like a huge cloud. Texas A& M handed Fisher a 10-year, $75 million contract to leave Florida State after Kevin Sumlin was fired last year. Aggie fans believe that’s 75 million reasons why he should be the one to deliver their first national title since 1939. He knew what the expectations were before the ink was dry on the deal. And he insists he isn’t daunted by them. “A contract doesn’t make you win,” he told The Associated Press. “I don’t want to have a great team, I want to have a great program and that takes time.” Fisher has taken over a program that went 7-5 and 4- 4 in Southeastern Conference play last season and one that hasn’t reached 10 wins since 2012. Fisher won a national title in 2013 and three Atlantic Coast Conference championships in eight seasons with the Seminoles. The Aggies seem ready to buy into Fisher’s brand of coaching. Player after player raved about their new boss.
“Coach Fisher has brought a sense of history,” running back Trayveon Williams said. “He has been to the national championship, and he knows what it takes to win. He has brought that to this university, and he brought great coaching. He brought in the right guys to get us ready to win a national championship.”
The good vibes hit a bump this week after a former player who transferred to Arizona suggested Fisher’s staff may have committed NCAA violations earlier this year. Linebacker Santino Marchiol told USA Today that assistant Bradley Dale Peveto gave himcash on two occasions to entertain recruits on unofficial visits to campus and that mandatory team activities were run at impermissible times. Texas A&M said it was reviewing the allegations.
Fisher is just the fourth head coach to leave a school where he has won an APnational championship and go directly into another college job. The last to do it was Johnny Majors, who went from Pittsburgh to Tennessee in 1977. Fisher had signed a contract extension through 2024 that was paying him $5.7 million last season. The 52-yearold West Virginia native seemed to have it made in Tallahassee — so why take on this challenge?
“I don’t think there’s any one reason,” he said. “There’s an accumulation of things. All the things have to be in place so you can do it. There was a lot of intrigue. First, I think you have the resources to do it all. Secondly, you have a commitment from your administration that is very important, people that see things in the same vision as I do.”
Fisher has been a coach of some sort since 1988. Another thing that drove the former college quarterback to leave Florida State was the thing that powers most who pick sports as a career.
“You like the challenge of let’s go do what hadn’t been done,” he said. “You like those challenges. If you’re a coach, a competitor, a player, whatever you are in athletics, if you don’t like the ability to try to do that then you’re probably not going to be successful wherever you go.”