Florida State isn’t firing Jimbo Fisher even if `Noles don’t make a bowl

With the Florida State Seminoles’ second-consecutive disastrous start to a season, some of the more extreme members of FSU’s fanbase are calling for Jimbo Fisher to be fired.

Given his overall track record at the school, that would seem foolish.

But even if he deserved to be, it wouldn’t happen.

Even if Fisher lost his team, and no longer had buy-in from his players.

Even if he angers donors by belittling their sizable accomplishments and donations, as he did on his radio show.

Even if FSU loses all of its remaining 2017 FBS games and finished 3-8.

That’s right.

Why? Because Jimbo Fisher just a signed a contract extension with a buyout of roughly $40M. That is such a prohibitive sum, that there is no way a school could pay it this year, or any time soon. No school in the history of college football has paid anything close to that number.

It’s just not feasible. Half of that would be an astronomical sum, much less the whole thing. It’s just not going to happen.

The best those fans can hope for is that Florida State makes the 3-4 coaching changes that, in hindsight, it should have made last year. Those coaching changes caused Fisher to lash out at a fan after FSU’s loss to Louisville.

What if Jimbo Fisher wants to leave?

That’s different.

If he elects to leave, Fisher’s buyout is the sum of all monies remaining on the contracts of his assistant coaches not retained by the university.

So, for example, if Fisher leaves, and the university retains none of ten coaches each making $500,000 on one-year deals, Fisher would owe the school $5M within 30 days. Given that many assistants are employed on two- or three-year contracts, this number is believed to be around $7M if Fisher were to leave following the 2017 season.

The practical impact of this is that it makes it safer for the school to give bigger raises to assistants, without the fear that it will be stuck paying them (or buying them out) if Fisher were to leave.