Jimbo Fisher: College sports is the most unfair thing we do

Jimbo Fisher climbed the coaching ranks as a long-time assistant in the Southeastern Conference, notably at Auburn and LSU, before winning a national title as successor to Bobby Bowden at Florida State and then eventually fired last fall from atop the Texas A&M program.

Fisher’s seen first-hand nearly every evolution in the sport the past 35 years. He knows college football.

And he believes it’s never been in more danger.

“I’m going to be honest with you: College sports is the most unfair thing we do,” Fisher said this week on SiriusXM radio’s Off Campus show. “College sports is unfair, and it’s because there’s haves and have-nots. And the way we …

“You think about how it’s set up, each commissioner, and Greg Sankey has done an unbelievable job for the SEC, Big Ten commissioners have done an unbelievable job for them. There’s only so many pieces of the pie, so they’ve taken them and they’ve hurt the ACC and the Big 12 and of course the PAC-12, who ended up folding.

“I think we have to find a way to come together and get a head of college football, where everything is balanced. I don’t like the inequities that are going on. It’s not fair, but it’s never been fair. You say the NCAA was the governing body; no, it wasn’t because each conference operated with (autonomy) to itself. They operated to what made each conference the best.”

Fisher sees the professional model – specifically that of the NFL – as inevitable and potentially the only path to save college football as it has been in its rise as arguably America’s second-most popular sport behind the NFL.

“The salary cap in the NFL is the same across the board, so that each team has a legitimate shot,” Fisher said. “How we do these things eventually, because I think that’s what’s going to have to happen is a salary cap. You’re going to go to revenue sharing and salary cap and all those types of things. I think that’s eventually what’s coming down the road. I think somehow everybody has to have the same salary cap, because it’s not fair.

“And I’ve been in the ACC and I’ve been in the SEC. I think we have to get a grip on this and find a way to make parity all the way across college football, or we’re missing the boat.”

Speaking in-depth on the show with a pair of his former players, Jacob Hester from LSU and EJ Manuel from Florida State, both of whom played in the NFL, Fisher said he doesn’t seen a path forward without revenue sharing – and he noted he expects more casualties, not fewer, than the programs and leagues already slipping – or plummeting – to irrelevance.

“If you’re going to go to revenue sharing, I want a salary cap and I want everybody to abide by that salary cap. That’s what’s got to happen to give the ACC schools and the Big 12 schools a legitimate chance,” said Fisher, fired by the Aggies despite being owed more than $75 million on his contract. “Now, Florida State and Clemson right now are going to battle their way in because of history, and Miami, maybe, they’re going to find a way to do those things.

“But if we don’t, it’s going to continue to grow (in disparity). I think it’s happening right now and we don’t want to say it, we don’t want to admit it now because look at the Transfer Portal. Who’s getting all the Transfer Portal (players), because they have all the money? You can’t sit there and say it’s not happening.”

Fisher, who won 78 games in his first seven seasons as Bowden’s heir, said he understood the positions of his former school, FSU, as well as Clemson and North Carolina as those programs seek to both secure their futures on the collegiate sports landscape and also aggressive explore jettisoning the ACC.

“That’s why it would be interesting being at Amelia Island right now (host site of ACC league meetings), with Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina trying to get out,” Fisher said. “Those meetings over there are going real interesting right now. And I know why: They want to be a have. To go over some history, EJ, when you were there (at Florida State), sometimes when I came back from those meetings and I was in a bad mood, I had gotten into it with the commissioner over there trying to tell him this was coming and they wouldn’t listen to me.”

Specifically, Fisher shared that he had gotten into intense disagreements with then-ACC commissioner John Swofford because Fisher said he forewarned of college athletics – specifically big-brand college football – being poised for seismic shifts.

“We got into a couple of knock-down, drag-outs and I was letting (Swofford) know,” Fisher said, “this was coming and we weren’t, in my opinion, we weren’t doing some of the things we needed to be doing in that league to allow us, because at that time, we were as good as anybody in the country, during our eight years there, we were in the top two or three winning percentages in the country, and ready to win national championships, we won one and played for one, but I knew eventually it was snowballing because of what we were doing as a conference alignment. And that stretch is getting greater, as we sit here.”

Fisher wondered aloud, given the current state of conference realignment as well as the NCAA Transfer Portal turning what Fisher termed former great programs into “junior college programs,” if Patrick Mahomes would have ever finished his career at Texas Tech.

“Here’s what’s happening, all of your mid-majors and some of your not-mid-majors, I’m going to say some of your ACC, Big 12, old Pac 12, all those leagues, they’re becoming glorified junior colleges and some of those teams used to battle for playoffs and have great teams,” Fisher said. “They took that three-star guy or that four-star guy you missed and they developed him into a heck of a player and he became a great player at their school.

“How about Patrick Mahomes at Texas Tech? Would he have ever stayed at Texas Tech? Somebody would have came and got him. And your Haves are out there saying, ‘OK, I need a corner and I need a tackle and I need a running back.’ [Pointing] They have one, they have one, they have one. And they’re going to these four-year schools and just selecting, and those guys are really becoming glorified junior colleges and it’s a shame. And I mean great college football programs that have won big in the past and have had tremendously great players and that is what’s changed. I think if we don’t even it out – I don’t know what the answer is – but we’ve got to get to some parity somehow, some way. It’s pushing exactly what you say, I don’t know if it’s 40 teams, 45, 50, 30; I don’t think it’s going to be as many as you think. That’s the sad part. How many are in the Big Ten now? (18). How many is going to be in the SEC now, 16? We were 14, going to be 16.

“So you’re 32 to 34 teams, somewhere in that realm.”

Michael Alford, Florida State’s current athletics director, also told SiriusXM this week that all options are on the table for his school.

“Now, we’re going to have to make decisions in seeing in what’s coming forward and making sure that we’re providing them the resources that we’re allowed to provide them so that we can compete at an elite level and that comes with revenue,” Alford said. “I’m anxious to see where all of this shakes out. I’ll tell you, we have proformas that go all the way out to 2043, we’ve got a budget that goes out there and we’ve got about eight different decision-tree metrics in that budget that is going to spark one thing or the next in our decision-making process, but it’s just getting prepared as much as you can for when this shakes out to where we can be.

“And we think we’re one of the top brands. We’re in a great conference, we’ve got great brands in this conference, but Florida State, in my eyes, is one of the top brands in collegiate sports. We’ve got to make sure we’re providing the resources to compete at that elite level.”