Fisher's 10-year, $75M contract with Texas A&M is not funded with any public moneygetty images
Texas A&M President Michael Young believes football coach Jimbo Fisher's $7.5M annual salary "will be an investment, not a budget line," if he "performs as we anticipate he will." Young appeared on a Texas Monthly podcast and noted the school will use "zero state money" to fund the 10-year, $75M contract Fisher signed in December '17. Young: "If he fills up Kyle Field, because we’ve got some empty seats, if we get to some New Year’s bowls, if we get some better TV times, he more than makes up for that salary. And it brings an enormous amount of visibility to the university." Young said A&M "could identify in a pretty granular way the actual economic benefit" of giving Fisher the largest contract in college football history. He said, "We weren’t just on a wing and a prayer, we weren’t just rolling dice and saying, ‘Man, I really hope this works.’ We looked at prior experience at our university and other universities and say, ‘What can we anticipate from this?’ It was a pretty data-driven conversation." Young later was asked about the possibility of A&M renewing its football rivalry with Texas, saying, "We will play, I just think we’ll play in a bowl game. ... I’d bet that’s where we’ll first meet" ("The National Podcast of Texas,” TEXASMONTHLY.com, 4/15). Meanwhile, Texas AD Chris Del Conte on Thursday was asked about renewing the rivalry following the departure of A&M AD Scott Woodward to LSU, but Del Conte said it was "too soon to have a conversation on that" (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, 4/19).
IMPORTANT OPINION: In Houston, Brent Zwerneman writes Fisher "should have a say in who his next 'boss' will be" following Woodward's move to Baton Rouge. Texas A&M execs "considered Woodward expendable, and had grown wary/weary of his free spending habits, even with all of the coin the athletic department is pulling in from the SEC." Those same leaders do "not consider Fisher expendable -- not by a long shot." It is why there is "zero doubt he’ll have a say" in who is the next AD (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 4/19).
