Jimbo Fisher Set To Receive $19 Million Check Within 60 Days As One Of Many Fired Coaches Paid Millions NOT To Coach

It's great work if you can get it - or NOT get it.

Texas A&M fired football coach Jimbo Fisher on Sunday less than 24 hours after his Aggies' 51-10 win at Mississippi State. That made his team bowl eligible at 6-4. There would be no bowl-eligible party at the Dixie Chicken back in College Station, however.

But do not feel too sorry for Jimbo.

He is dealing with professional embarrassment, yes. He is the biggest bust in college football coaching history, according to contract. So, he may be red-faced all the way to the bank. Because he just won the lottery.

Jimbo Fisher speaks as Texas A&M's coach at the SEC Media Days in Nashville last July. (Photo by Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images)

Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork stupidly gave one of the highest paid coaches in the country already a $1.5 million raise to $9 million a year and four-year contract extension through 2031. That was only because Fisher went 10-1 in the COVID season of 2020.

Jimbo Fisher Already Among Highest Paid Before Extension

Fisher had already become the highest paid college football coach in the nation just three years previously. That's when then-Texas A&M athletic director Scott Woodward hired him for $75 million over 10 years. So going 10-1 in his third year and narrowly missing the four-team College Football Playoff was right on schedule for that contract, Ross.

Was Bjork trying to upstage his more well known and higher regarded predecessor? Probably. And Bjork and A&M were just showing off - Texas-style.

Texas A&M Athletic Director Ross Bjork Goofed

Fisher would not have left Texas A&M without the contract enhancement after the 2020 season. No one at the time was seriously trying to hire him, or even casually. He was already a disappointment, coming off an average 8-5 season with a 4-4 SEC finish in 2019 for the last tier Texas Bowl. He only went 9-4 and 5-3 for the Gator Bowl in his first season. He didn't need the raise and contract extension.

And Woodward did not need to pay Fisher as much as he did to get him away from Florida State following the 2017 season. Fisher was already stumbling to 5-6 that season from 17-1 in 2013 and '14 with a national title in '13. He finished 25-12 over the next three seasons. Fisher was also disenchanted with new leadership at Florida State that was not improving his facilities quick enough. Woodward and A&M were showing off.

Now, A&M is having to show the money like no other school in history, and that includes all its boosters and money men, before it.

Texas A&M Aggies Owe Jimbo Fisher A $76 Million Buyout

Texas A&M owes Fisher a $76 million buyout for the remainder of his contract through 2031 whether Fisher, 58, decides to coach or do something else again. Texas A&M has to come up with a check for 25 percent of that contract - a cool $19 million - within 60 days. Or, a series of checks.

Everything's big in Texas, and Fisher's buyout dwarfs any previous one of coaches fired without cause. That means they got fired only because they were judged not to be winning enough and not for anything off the field. The next one on the list is former Auburn coach Gus Malzahn. He is still being paid after Auburn fired him following the 2020 season. Yeah, that's three coaches ago at Auburn - the place to get fired from before Texas A&M Sunday.

Former Auburn coach Gus Malzahn is still being paid by the school while he is presently the head coach at Central Florida. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

Central Florida Coach Gus Malzahn Still Being Paid By Auburn

Malzahn's buyout was $21.5 million - more than three times less than Fisher's. And Malzahn is still getting checks from Auburn while making $4 million a year as Central Florida's coach. Auburn is also still paying Bryan Harsin. It fired him after the 2022 season with a buyout of $15.5 million. He is No. 6 on our list. Harsin is not coaching at the moment.

Auburn has a history of paying multiple coaches at the same time, not to coach at Auburn.

The College Football Paid-Not-To-Coach List

Here is the complete Paid-Not-To-Coach-Here list with the firing squad and total buyout at the time of dismissal:

1. Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M - $76 million, 2023.

2. Gus Malzahn, Auburn - $21.5 million, 2020.

3. Charlie Weis, Notre Dame - $19 million, 2009.

4. Willie Taggart, Florida State - $18 million, 2019.

5. Bryan Harsin, Auburn - $15.5 million, 2022.

6. Tom Herman, Texas - $15.4 million, 2020.

7. Scott Frost, Nebraska - $15 million, 2022.

8. Bobby Petrino, Louisville - $14 million, 2018.

9. Geoff Collins, Georgia Tech - $11.4 million, 2022.

10. Will Muschamp, South Carolina - $11 million, 2020.

10. Paul Chryst, Wisconsin - $11 million, 2022.

Amazingly, five of the above coaches all took courses in overpayment management at the same university - Auburn. Those were Fisher, Malzahn, Harsin, Petrino and Muschamp.

The list does not include coaches fired with cause, meaning they do not get any buyout money from the remainder of their contract as they were fired for off-the-field incidents or issues. But they could eventually win settlements for much or all of their remaining contract through lawsuits. Michigan State coach Mel Tucker and Northwestern Coach Pat Fitzgerald, for example, have been fired in recent months for cause, but each filed lawsuits against their former employers.

Former Auburn Coach Bryan Harsin Still Getting Paid

Fisher coached quarterbacks at Auburn from 1993-98. Malzahn worked as Auburn's offensive coordinator from 2009-11. Petrino coordinated Auburn's offense in 2002. And Muschamp coordinated Auburn's defense in 2015 and worked as a graduate assistant there in 1995 and '96.

In all, Power 5 schools since 2022 are in the process of paying nearly $150 million to fired coaches not to coach for them.

And all those buyouts were just the beginning. Now Texas A&M, and the others before them, have to pay off the contracts of the fired coach's assistants who are not retained. Then they have to come up with huge bucks again for the new coach and staff.

Texas A&M is expected to have to pay $100 million to the departing staff.

At least, though, Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork feels he has learned something from the Jimbo Fisher financial fallout. Do not look for Texas A&M's next coach to get a 10-year contract.

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"The finances are monumental. So, we have to learn a lesson," he said at a press conference Sunday night in reference to the extension and raise for Fisher after the 2020 season. "The dynamics around that decision, that was an institutional decision. But I take responsibility. I knew that it was the right decision at that time because that's the information we had."

Uh, not exactly. You and your institution messed up, period.

"It didn't work out," he said. "Clearly, it didn't work out."

Ross Bjork is fortunate he has not been fired, but you can bet he is on watch. And if the new coach doesn't "work out," he may not work out at Texas A&M.

"We're going to learn from that, and make sure that we don't make those same mistakes again," he said.

No athletic director has two "monumental" mistakes and remains.