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Happy Wednesday, SporticoU readers! Let’s dive back into the world of college sports…
Outside of the Michigan sign-stealing saga, the big news in college football this past weekend was Texas A&M’s decision to fire Jimbo Fisher in the midst of his sixth season in College Station—and with a staggering $77 million left on his buyout.
That $77 million is, by far, the largest buyout a university has ever paid to a college football coach. As Sportico’s Kurt Badenhausen wrote Sunday, that number is “roughly what Texas A&M earns in a single year from tickets, sponsorships, licensing and advertising from all sports.” Some $19 million of it will need to be paid out within the next 60 days.
The Aggies are in this position because they gambled on their head coach six years ago—and then again two years ago—and lost.
A proud football school that hasn’t won a national championship since 1939 and hasn’t even won a division title since moving to the SEC, Texas A&M went all-out to change that when it lured Fisher away from Florida State in 2017 with a headline-grabbing 10-year, $75 million contract. Fisher was coming off a career 83-23 record with the Seminoles, including winning the 2013 national title plus two Orange Bowls.
After opening his Texas A&M tenure 26-10, Fisher received a 10-year, $95 million extension from the university two years ago, locking him in through 2031 days before his fourth season began. Since then the Aggies have gone 19-15, including 10-13 in SEC play.
Moral of the story? While money of course helps, it doesn’t guarantee championships in college football. Texas A&M leaves the Fisher tenure with a (to date) 6-4 season, and the team will need a win over No. 15 LSU to avoid finishing 4-4 in the SEC. The Aggies’ SEC record in head coach Kevin Sumlin’s final season, before Fisher took over? You guessed it—4-4. They won three bowl games under Fisher but never got to the College Football Playoff, and finished with fewer than four losses just once (a 9-1 mark in the COVID-shortened 2020 season).
In an era of NIL, booster collectives and exploding coach salaries, Texas A&M has a lot of built-in advantages. It plays in the SEC, the crown conference of college football, and its athletic department has the ability to spend big. Per Sportico’s College Athletic Departments Financial Database, the Aggies shelled out $177,671,900 in total operating expenses for athletics in 2021-22, which was sixth among public schools.
With a strong donor base that’s eager to win on the gridiron, Texas A&M has also been widely considered one of the best-positioned schools when it comes to NIL and recruiting. That public reputation was solidified by Nick Saban’s pointed comments in May 2022 that “A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image and likeness.” Saban’s remarks referred to Fisher reeling in the nation’s No. 1 ranked recruiting class in 2022—one spot above Alabama—after an 8-4 season, and spurred an SEC media firestorm around the coaches.
But bringing in the top-ranked class is only one step on the path to success. Retaining that talent and developing it into a winning college product is another. Of the 24 four- or five-star recruits A&M landed in ‘22, six were not on the roster a year later. Additionally, five of the top eight commits in Fisher’s 2021 class were gone by 2023.
Two years after Fisher was given that massive extension, Texas A&M will start anew, while the coach it just fired will have the buyout checks flowing—regardless of whether he takes a new job elsewhere.
In the NIL and transfer portal era, rebuilds at the biggest schools are not necessarily daunting. But breaking into the sport’s elite tier alongside the likes of Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State is another story. And as the Aggies have shown, you need more than money to get there.
(This story was updated in the eighth paragraph to note that Texas A&M’s 2021-22 operating expenses were for all sports.)