On Sunday, Texas A&M fired head coach Jimbo Fisher, which wasn’t a surprise as Fisher kept the Aggies mired in mediocrity and failed to lead the team to national title contention.
The only surprise was that it took so long to do it. But when you are the Aggies and you agreed to not one but two ridiculous, fully guaranteed contracts with a coach who failed to deliver what was promised, you have to do everything you can to reduce the pending humiliation that will follow.
In this case, no one involved can hide from the criticism they rightfully deserve for agreeing to Fisher’s extensions.
In 2017, Fisher received a 10-year, $75 million contract to leave Florida State and become Texas A&M’s new head coach. He replaced Kevin Sumlin who, while helping the Aggies win, ultimately failed to elevate the team to national title contention.
With Fisher, the hope was that he would capture the magic he had during the Seminoles 2013 BCS championship, and spread it around College Station.
After going 9-4, 8-5 and 9-1 in his first three years, Texas A&M leadership decided Fisher’s performance warranted a longer, more lucrative deal. So they presented him with a 10-year, $95 full guaranteed extension in September 2021.
And of course, Fisher delivered.
Oh, wait. My bad.
In reality, Fisher only won in the recruiting game, where he assembled a top-10 recruiting class almost annually, including one in 2022 that caused Nick Saban to accuse him of paying players.
“I mean, we were second in recruiting last year,” ranted Saban in May of 2022. “A&M was first. A&M bought every player on their team — made a deal for name, image, likeness. We didn’t buy one player, all right? But I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it. It’s tough.”
Turns out Saban should have directed his ire at Texas A&M brass for falling victim to Jimbo Fisher and his management team, which engineered the greatest heist in college football.
Over the next two seasons, Fisher went 8-4, 5-7 and then 6-4 this season before the university decided to fire him on Sunday.
“I determined our program is stuck in neutral. We should be relevant on the national scene,” said athletic director Ross Bjork. “Something is not clicking and therefore, something had to give.”
Over his six-year tenure at Texas A&M, Fisher amassed a record of 45-25. During this time, the Aggies never even made it to an SEC Championship game. For all his coaching futility, he is still owed almost $77 million due to his guaranteed contract.
So while he and his agent are celebrating at the bank, Aggies’ leadership begins the process of searching for a new head coach.
And this is where media bias surfaces for all to see.
I read a few suggestions about possible replacements for Fisher. While the names weren’t surprising, it was frustrating to read for it was rife with the traditional thought process and names, especially in the SEC.
And it’s a process that always seems to exclude Black coaches.
The Athletic’s list of replacements includes Duke’s Mike Elko, Washington’s coach Kalen DeBoer, Kansas State’s Chris Klieman, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, Minnesota’s P.J. Fleck, Kansas’ Lance Leipold, UTSA’s Jeff Traylor, and Troy’s Jon Sumrall. They even suggested former Aggie and current Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell, who has the Lions at 7-2 after Sunday’s victory over the Chargers.
CBS Sports’ list was almost the same but added Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin, Florida State’s Mike Norvell, USC senior analyst Kliff Kingsbury (yes, the same Kingsbury who led the Arizona Cardinals to a 28-37-1 record over four years) and Georgia co-defensive coordinator Glen Schumann.
Missing from these lists are names of qualified Black coaches.
This includes Maryland’s Mike Locksley, former Stanford coach David Shaw, Marshall’s Charles Huff, Penn State’s James Franklin, Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn, West Virginia offensive coordinator Chad Scott and Michigan offensive coordinator Sherrone Moore.
Some may feel that these men aren’t qualified. While that can be debated and, more importantly, refuted, what’s indisputable is the fact that they’re not even in the conversation.
And that’s the real issue.
For the media to not even consider them as potential candidates is both disturbing and infuriating because it perpetuates the idea of what a head coach looks like. This is especially true in the SEC, where former Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason, fired after the 2020 season, was the last Black head coach in the conference.
We’ve seen the NFL’s coaching bias shift towards offensive coordinators, where the dominant majority of coaches are white. The same is true in college football.
According to the NCAA, while 14% of Power 5 coaches were Black in 2022, only 9% were offensive coordinators. Yet 26% were defensive coordinators.
“The racial imbalance in college coaching really starts to intensify when you move from the position coaches, the assistants, to the coordinator level,” said Raj Kudchadkar, the executive director of the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches, in an interview with the AP.
Texas A&M has promoted co-defensive coordinator Elijah Robinson to interim head coach for the remainder of the season. But with only two games remaining, don’t expect Elijah to get a fair shot at the job next season.
We saw how that worked out for other Black interim head coaches in Power 5 football.
As I wrote in that story on Cadillac Williams and Mickey Joseph:
“This is why it’s so agonizing to see Black coaches given interim head coaching titles, even when they’re history-making appointments. It’s because we recognize the biased process that will ultimately reject these men from permanent positions.
“We frustratingly watch them lead fragmented locker rooms consisting of players they didn’t recruit or lead down a losing path.
“Yet they ultimately suffer the consequences after navigating the ship through tumultuous waters.“
Overall, this mindset and process need to change, for a perception of what a head coach looks like is ingrained in the heads of too many decision makers. That causes problems for qualified Black coaches who are almost instantly disqualified from the process because they don’t fit those perceptions.
As I’ve said many times before, this isn’t about demeaning the white coaches. Instead, it’s about getting universities and programs to open up their eyes to other versions of qualified candidates.
And it’s about letting the media know that there are qualified coaches out there of a darker shade who deserve consideration, too.
