Florida State has seemingly gone out of its way to let Bobby Bowden walk away on his own terms, but Bowden and the Seminoles will have quite the interesting situation on their hands if he’s not ready to walk away after the 2010 season.
FSU hasn’t been a juggernaut as of late, and even Bowden himself has indicated that he doesn’t think the program will see a major renaissance under his watch. But he’s just two wins behind Joe Paterno on the all-time list, and JoePa is signed up for three more years at Penn State. If Bowden wants to end his career as the wins leader, he’ll have to stick around a while. But is it worth $5 million to the university?
According to the ORLANDO SENTINEL’s David Whitley, coach-in-waiting Jimbo Fisher has a clause in his contract that says he’ll receive a $5 million payment if he’s not head coach by January 2011. Whitley says that figure became public when Fisher’s name came up in the Auburn search:
We knew he was due $2.5 million and any school that hired him would have to pay FSU that amount. Few knew those numbers had been doubled.
The coach-in-waiting scenario that T.K. Wetherell engineered made sense at first. Now it looks more like a time-bomb-in-waiting.
FSU is already paying Bowden $2.5 million per season, and if he doesn’t go away in two years it will cost the university three times that much to let him stay. Will FSU really let Bowden make his own decision with $5 million on the line? Or might they “nudge” him toward stepping down?
All I know is that if I’m Fisher, I’m rooting for Bowden to stick around so I can get my cash right away. I can’t imagine that he’ll be on a very long leash when he does take over.
This is all part of a growing trend of naming coaching successors. Chip Kelly at Oregon and Will Muschamp at Texas have similar situations. But do they have a similar clause that gives them money if their bosses don’t step aside by a certain date?
What we do know about Fisher’s contract is that it requires any other school that hires him to come up with the amount of this balloon payment to get him away from FSU. That might be why he hasn’t seriously been considered as a coach elsewhere, as that school would have to drop $5 million just to get him on campus.
Muschamp was rumored to be a candidate at Auburn, but maybe there’s a similar payment Auburn would’ve had to make to pull him away from the Longhorns.
5:39 pm on December 23rd, 2008
$5 million? That's a lot of Metamucil.
5:47 pm on December 23rd, 2008
The way both programs are going, I don't think Bobby's going to catch Joe. The Lions are on their way to the Rose Bowl as Big Ten champs, while the Seminoles are going to…who knows?
Maybe FSU needs to schedule more games against Western Carolina & Chattanooga.
6:03 pm on December 23rd, 2008
This coach-in-waiting routine makes about as much sense as the BCS.
11:45 am on December 24th, 2008
Long live Bobby Bowden he is the man who made FSU Seminoles who they are today. Screw old man Paterno PSU SUCKS!! ROLL NOLES!!!!
4:41 pm on December 24th, 2008
Muschamp isn't going anywhere. Why sneak out when the best coaching job in America will be yours soon enough?
11:01 pm on December 25th, 2008
The Noles are a young team that still play very, very competitive under Bowden. He brought the Noles to where they are, and that is still a very good team. Look to Bama and the Noles to be "the" teams in the next two years because they are both young teams with a ton of talent. No team is top five in the nation every year!
1:57 pm on December 27th, 2008
Actually Cliff there is a team thats in the top 5 every year. USC. Actually lets make that the top 3. And the only thing Bama and the Noles are gonna be is "THE" teams behind USC in the poles next year. By the way I've been a nole fan for many years and think Bowden is one of the greatest coaches ever, but the youngest and most all around talented team year in and year out for the past few years is Pete's boys out west. Florida, FSU, and Miami have lost their stranglehold on all of the talent coming out of the deep south, while there is no real competition for USC. Just my opinion but at least we can all agree that many of Jo Pa's wins came against some pretty subpar competion even when Penn St was an independant like FSU was. Before joining the ACC year in and year out Bobby's team had one of the toughest schedules while not having to run up the score against the Citadel or Marshall.
3:03 pm on December 28th, 2008
What most people don't take in account is that FSU as played a significantly more difficult schedule than PSU over the years. Had the Noles been in the Big 10 they might not of lost a game in the 90's, and had two or three more titles. Joe Pa is a great coach, but he's not in the same league with Bowden. FSU's motto is "we'll play anybody anywhere", PSU hides in the Big 10, playing no one out of conference that could beat them. Next year FSU's out of conference games are, BYU, TCU and Florida. In 2010 they add OU to their out of confernce schedule. If Bowden hadn't hired his son as offensive coordinator the race between the two would be long over.