Jimbo Fisher is Texas A&M's latest, boldest big-money bet play
Channel: Events And News
Date: 2018-08-31

Texas A&M found its man, price be damned, and the outrage came swiftly.

Determined to place its football program among the nation's elite after winning just one conference title in the previous two decades, the Aggies went out and paid a record sum to land one of the nation's best coaches. It was a coup, but the gaudy contract called into question the priorities of a university.

A Michigan mathematics professor said it was a "sad sidelight on American society." A Wisconsin professor predicted a faculty revolt if such a deal were made in Madison. "I just wonder how they can do that," said the athletic director at Arizona.

"It comes to a matter of market conditions," an A&M spokesman told The New York Times. "It costs that much money to get a top-caliber football coach."

This was in 1982, when the Aggies had just given Jackie Sherrill the first contract with a total value exceeding $1 million in college football history, luring him from Pitt after three consecutive 11-1 seasons.


Morgan Engel/USA TODAY Sports
In December, 36 years after Sherrill's contract ignited a debate, the Aggies guaranteed $75 million over 10 years to Jimbo Fisher, one of just four active coaches with a national championship, to whisk him away from Florida State. Once again, it was the richest contract ever given to a college football coach.

Because, like all things sacred at A&M, spending money on a top-caliber coach is a well-worn school tradition.

When Texas A&M athletic director Scott Woodward fired Kevin Sumlin, who went 51-26 in the Aggies' first six seasons in the SEC (albeit with a 25-23 conference record), the Aggies paid their coach $10.4 million to go away. The buyout, coupled with the $7.5 million annually for Fisher, shocked college football fans across the country.

A&M had done the unthinkable, hiring a coach away from a school where he won a national title for the first time in 40 years (since Johnny Majors left Pitt for Tennessee in 1976). How could Fisher leave Florida State, where he went 83-23, won three ACC titles and finished in the AP's top 10 four times, for A&M, which hasn't won a conference title since winning the Big 12 in 1998 and had finished no higher than fourth in the SEC West in the past five seasons?

The answer: This is what the Aggies do.

It's what they've done for more than 60 years, with possibly the most ambitious track record of hiring coaches of any school in the country. But ambition and success are different matters. And the two have rarely met when it comes to A&M's searches, some of which rival Tennessee's calamity this year. These searches have everything: oilmen, billionaire radio broadcasters, scared coaches and outraged governors.

The Ags' first foray into the world of major college football paid immediate dividends. In 1954, three regents formed an "athletic committee" of the board, and conducted business independently of the faculty athletics group that reported to the president. Jack Finney, a 37-year-old wholesale baker, took it upon himself to land Paul "Bear" Bryant, who was 60-23-6 at Kentucky, to be coach and athletic director. A&M gave him the largest contract ever given to a Southwest Conference coach -- $25,000 a year, including $15,000 from the school, and $10,000 from a foundation that was overseen by another regent, W.T. "Doc" Doherty. Bryant turned the Aggies around, leading A&M to its first conference title in 15 years and helping running back John David Crow win the only Heisman Trophy given to a Bryant player. Bryant famously left to return to Alabama after four seasons, because "Mama called" him to his alma mater.


Paul "Bear" Bryant was A&M's first big-money hire, and he built a winner in College Station. Courtesy of Texas A&M Cushing Library
The success -- the closest the Aggies had come to reliving the glory years of their only national championship in 1939 -- served to feed future bombast and dysfunction.

In January 1958, while the university's faculty athletic council searched for Bryant's replacement, which focused on Iowa State coach Jim Myers, Finney's advisory group seemingly pulled off another stunner by landing Notre Dame legend Frank Leahy, who had six undefeated seasons, won four national titles and coached four Heisman Trophy winners. But Leahy, who had been out of coaching for almost four years due to health issues, said doctors balked at his return to coaching, and he had to back out.

Afterward, it was reported that Finney offered $60,000 a year to Michigan State's Duffy Daugherty -- who was making $20,000 in East Lansing -- and met with UCLA coach Henry "Red" Sanders and Navy coach Eddie Erdelatz, who was rattled by the rival factions on a visit to College Station. "It scared me. I wanted to get out," Erdelatz said afterward. "I was in a whirl as to who was in charge."