Texas A&M Aggies Record Buyout of Jimbo Fisher Is A Program Disaster
When the Texas A&M Aggies hired Jimbo Fisher to replace Kevin Sumlin in 2017, it was supposed to represent a turning point in the future of the program.
No longer would the Aggies be running on the treadmill of mediocrity. No longer would they tolerate failure. It was championships, lots of them, or nothing.
They paid him like it too, signing him to a massive extension through 2031, that would pay him $9.6 million per year.
But as it turns out, that decision was nothing short of a disaster of epic proportions, with the Aggies now owing Fisher the largest buyout for a college football head coach in the history of the sport, at $76 million after his firing on Sunday - shattering the previous record of $21.45 for Gus Malzahn at Auburn.
Unfortunately for the Aggies, it won't end there either, all told with the staff in place, the true total the program will have to pay to move on from Fisher's regime will cost more in the neighborhood of $150 million.
That is how badly the decision-makers at Texas A&M wanted to move on from Fisher - And it's easy to see why.
Jimbo Fisher during the Texas A&M Aggies matchup vs. the Ole Miss Rebels.
Petre Thomas-USA TODAY Sports
Over his six years in College Station, Fisher was 45-25 and 27-21 in conference, winning three bowl games, and never winning more than nine games in a season. Last season's 5-7 campaign, in fact, was the worst for the program since Dennis Francione ran the program in 2003 and finished at 4-8.
Sumlin, meanwhile - who Fisher was brought in to replace - finished his A&M tenure with a 51-26 record, won three bowl games, and guided the Aggies to an 11-2 record in 2011.
To make things even worse for the Aggies, their historically good recruiting efforts over the last handful of years, particularly in 2022, were not enough to overcome Fisher's ineptitude in leading the program.
Now, given the landscape of college football as we know it, it would not be unreasonable to assume that many of those players could decide to move on from the program via the NCAA Transfer Portal.
In other words, rather than taking a step forward and entering the arena of college football elites with their 'national championship head coach', the Aggies took a massive step back.
And unless they make a home run hire over the next few weeks to save face, the Fisher tenure will turn out to be arguably one of the biggest coaching disasters in college football history.
