Cost of big business
Fisher’s $75 million deal with Aggies raises eyebrows, but title could win over naysayers
COLLEGE STATION — Jackie Sherrill stepped on an elevator in Texas A&M’s Rudder Tower in 1983 and came face-toface with a revered professor who a year prior had denounced Sherrill’s hire because of the money involved.
Sherrill cursed under his breath. The professor extended his hand and said, “I’m glad you’re here.” Sherrill, A&M’s former football coach, recalled the story on Saturday after the Aggies lured Jimbo Fisher from Florida State with one of the richest contracts in the sport’s history.
“College football is a big business,” Sherrill said of the guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract Fisher will sign Monday at A&M. “Whether we want to admit it or not.”
The stories surrounding Fisher last week sound awfully familiar to Sherrill, hired by A&M from Pittsburgh 35 years ago to try to resuscitate a motionless program for what some considered outlandish numbers at the time.
The outspoken professor, who’d eventually come around to the idea that college football is a lucrative business, and plenty of others in 1982 nationally bemoaned Sherrill’s six-year contract for about $287,000 annually (a total of more than $1.7 million).
The New York Times wrote the contract made Sherrill “what educators believe to be the highest-paid employee of an American university.” The editor of the Battalion, the A&M student newspaper, lamented the hiring in Newsweek.
“The regents reach in where they have no place, spend over a million dollars on a football coach and we find ourselves the butt of national jokes,” she said. “This is not the kind of reputation A&M should be building.”
The Aggies certainly didn’t have a reputation for good football at the time. A&M hadn’t won a Southwest Conference title since 1967 at the time of Sherrill’s hire, but starting three years later the Aggies won three straight league championships (1985-87), making the investment in Sherrill worth it.
Money not an issue
Now A&M, one of the wealthiest universities and athletic departments in the nation, is banking on Fisher to kick-start a dawdling program. He won a national title at FSU in 2013 and is one of four active college football coaches with championships, along with Alabama’s Nick Saban, Ohio State’s Urban Meyer and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney. Fisher will be the nation’s second-highest paid coach behind Saban ($8.1 million annually).
Fisher replaces Kevin Sumlin, who made $5 million annually but failed to win an SEC West title in his six seasons prior to his firing a week ago. The Aggies are paying Sumlin $10.4 million to not coach the final two seasons of his contract, and they can afford to do so (even if that swollen number makes fans squeamish).
For the last two years A&M is the top grossing athletic department in the nation, according to USA Today’s annual rankings. In 2015-16 A&M athletics took in $194 million and spent $137 million. The football program is selfsustaining and then some — and helps support plenty of non-revenue A&M sports.
“It’s supply and demand,” said Sherrill, in evoking the most straightforward of business principles. For instance, Kyle Field holds about 102,000 fans, and if each seat brings in roughly $200, including concessions (and that’s a conservative estimate), the total over six or seven home games comes to more than $140 million.
“Then you throw in the league money and the TV contracts,” Sherrill said.
A&M must continue to fill those seats, however, and attendance began lagging this season as it became clear the Aggies (7-5) were headed toward another middling finish. While attendance typically was announced around 100,000 based on tickets sold, by late in the season an estimated 80,000-85,000 were on hand — still an impressive number overall.
A&M chancellor John Sharp and athletic director Scott Woodward, two of the driving forces behind the Fisher hire, have declined comment until the regents approve the contract Monday morning. An introductory news conference will be held shortly after. In the meantime, the Aggies and special-teams coach Jeff Banks, who’s leading the team in the interim, will find out Sunday their bowl destination.
Sherrill once sought coach’s services
Fisher already is working on recruiting and is set to arrive at A&M for good Sunday morning. Sherrill, who also served as Mississippi State’s coach from 1991-2003, tried hiring Fisher when the latter was quarterbacks coach at LSU in the early 2000s.
Sherrill recognized a rising star in the business, one who’s finally landed at a place where Sherrill once won three consecutive conference championships, and knows how supportive of a winner A&M can be.
“All the coaches who have worked with Jimbo are very positive about him,” Sherrill said. “He’s a very good recruiter, and he motivates his players.”
And if Fisher can sometime soon win the Aggies’ first league title since 1998, Sherrill figures plenty of folks now wary of the new contract will extend a hand and say, “I’m glad you’re here.”