CHARLOTTE — Jimbo Fisher spent this week behind a desk at ACC Network’s media days set, breaking down the league he once dominated. The camera lights suit him fine. But the man who won a national title at Florida State and walked away from Texas A&M with the largest buyout in college football history says he’d trade the headset for a whistle tomorrow.
“But coaches are coaches,” Fisher told The Athletic on Friday. He’d like to scribble out “television analyst” on his business cards and replace it with “head coach.”
Fisher has been out of the game since Texas A&M fired him late in the 2023 season and handed him $77.5 million to leave. Mike Elko replaced him and last season led the Aggies to the College Football Playoff. Fisher, meanwhile, has spent two years in a studio chair, preparing for ACC Network broadcasts the way he used to prepare for Saturdays — studying film, drawing up game plans, scratching the same competitive itch that consumed three decades of his life.
“The relationship with players. The competition. I miss the competition. I miss recruiting,” Fisher said. “If I can recruit without money, I can recruit with money. I promise you that. But I miss the competition, the gameplanning. That was never work to me. That was fun. It was a grind, but it was fun.”
That last line lands different when you consider the man’s résumé. Fisher spent a decade as an assistant under Nick Saban at LSU and Bobby Bowden at Florida State before taking over the Seminoles in 2010. He went 83-23 in Tallahassee, won the 2013 national championship with Jameis Winston, and ripped off three straight ACC titles. Then, with FSU sitting 5-6 in 2017, he bolted for Texas A&M on a fully guaranteed 10-year, $75 million deal — unprecedented money at the time. After a 9-1 pandemic season in 2020, he signed an extension worth $95 million guaranteed. The wins dried up: 8-4 in 2021, 5-7 in 2022, and 6-4 when the axe fell in 2023.
The sport Fisher left has turned inside out. Players get paid. General managers sit in football offices. The rulebook shifts like sand in an August windstorm. None of it scares him off. Fisher said he’s already thought through how he’d structure a front office in the current era — evaluators, recruiters, money dispersers, all of it reporting to the head coach.
“GMs and people aren’t used to recruiting,” Fisher said. “There’s an art to recruiting and how you go about recruiting and setting that process up. There’s a division within that. There’s a group that handles money and disperses. There’s evaluators, recruiters and money dispersers and the head coach has got to still have that power over that as he goes.”
He’s not holding out for a throne. Fisher said he’d be open to a college head job or an NFL offensive coordinator role if the fit felt right. Asked what he’s looking for in a head coaching post, he kept it plain: “Anyone that would give us a fair chance to win. It doesn’t have to be elite-elite. I’ve coached in different levels, FCS, Cincinnati, different places. It’s just coaching ball.”
He’s also staying plugged in. Fisher participates weekly in The 33rd Team, a call started in 2019 by former Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum that connects former coaches, GMs, and players to discuss the sport. The group has consulted with teams making hires.
For now, he’s bracing for a third season away from the field. The TV work pays and the people are good. But the pull hasn’t loosened.
“If another opportunity doesn’t come, I like doing TV,” Fisher said. “I like the people, the interaction. I like it.”
He said it like a man who’d take the right phone call before the sentence finished.
Sources: