The college football landscape has changed so dramatically in the fourteen years since Jimbo Fisher first became a head coach at Florida State. He experienced many of those changes after he left Tallahassee to be the head coach at Texas A&M for the 2018 season prior to his firing last year.
He sounded off on the current state of college football on SiriusXM Radio’s Off Campus Show this week.
If you’re a fan of a Big 12 or ACC team, you might not love what he had to say.Jimbo Fisher was overall very critical of the current state of the college game. That’s a pretty common opinion in these days, as it’s hard to argue that everything but the on-field product isn’t a complete and total mess.
And, it’s not as if he was bashing the ACC and Big 12 for his own pleasure or to puff out his own chest. It was mostly a criticism of the current state of college football that he claimed has essentially doomed the two leagues to second-class status.
“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.”
He makes a great point. Aside from the top programs in the ACC like Clemson and Florida State, how many schools in the ACC and Big 12 can consistently keep breakout underclassmen away from the NIL purses of the top teams in the Big Ten and SEC? At this point, probably not many. At this point, they are second-class citizens to the Big Ten and SEC in many ways.
That’s why you see schools like Florida State trying to leave the ACC for the Big Ten or SEC. Yes, conference affiliation doesn’t necessarily impact NIL budgets. But, generally speaking, the schools in the Big Ten and SEC have larger alumni or booster bases that are more willing to fund NIL than, say, Wake Forest or Cincinnati or Iowa State. And, that lack of perceived strength of schedule, along with Jordan Travis’s injury, probably kept Florida State out of the College Football Playoff despite being 13-0 after the ACC Championship Game last year.
Would Patrick Mahomes have stayed at Texas Tech? Who knows for sure. For example, Drake Maye stuck around at UNC last year after allegedly having huge offers from some SEC programs. But, UNC is one of the deeper-pocketed schools and booster bases left in those two conferences.
Recently, the league has seen quarterbacks in Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman and Duke’s Riley Leonard transfer to Notre Dame, and North Carolina State’s Devin Leary transfer to Kentucky. Those are just quarterbacks. An example from another position would be current Detroit Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs, who transferred from Georgia Tech to Alabama prior to the 2022 season.
Sadly, it seems like Jimbo Fisher is on the right track here.
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