Over the past few years, there have been rumblings about Jimbo Fisher not being totally content at Florida State. There have been alleged frustrations with the basketball-centric ACC, and more recently frustrations with his own administration over the handling of the Jameis Winston fiasco.
No idea from this corner if Fisher will be there another year, or another 10 years. This is all from the outside looking in, of course. But it's interesting to see him sort of dangling the possibility of a move to the NFL, according to this article.
"I never say never," Fisher said. "I'm not one of those guys that that's my end-all ambition. But in this business you never say never. I've had some opportunities to go up in the NFL and I've chosen not to do it, as coordinators and coaches - not as a head coach, I've had some people inquire. But it's not a driving force to me to do that, not saying I wouldn't ever do it, because you'll never know in this business."
Fisher said he's never had an official offer to be an NFL head coach, but teams have gauged his interest through various channels.
"I've had people inquire that if I'd be interested, through agents and stuff like that," Fisher said. "And it's just not something that I've jumped on right away."
Again, who knows. It's just interesting to see how long he entertains the topic.
"I love college kids. I love 18-to-22, 23-year-old kids. I love the family life. I love living in the towns I live in. I love living in Tallahassee. It's a great place to raise a family, it's a great place to grow. You're living in warm weather. I don't have that ambition - not saying, again, I wouldn't - but it's not my driving force to have to be a pro football coach."
Some good links today. Here goes:
-- Dennis Dodd reports that deregulation of conference title game requirements is supposed to occur by 2016.
The move would directly impact the Big 12 and ACC, which developed the legislation. The Big 12, which is the only Power Five league without a championship game, is merely seeking the option of staging such a contest with 10 teams. The ACC's ultimate intentions with a 14-team league in football, one which already holds a championship game, are not clear.
Current NCAA rules state a league must have at least 12 teams in order to play a conference title game. Those teams also must play a round-robin within each division.
The legislation is now expected to move forward after being delayed somewhat by NCAA governance reform. CBSSports.com reported last year that legislation had formally been submitted.
"I think there's some belief that ACC would play three divisions, have two highest-ranked play in postseason," said Bob Bowlsby, chairman of the new NCAA Football Oversight Committee. "Really, nobody cares how you determine your champion. It should be a conference-level decision.
"But because the ACC has persisted in saying, 'We're not sure what we'll do,' there's probably a little bit of a shadow over it. In the end, I don't think it'll be able to hold it up. We'll probably have it in place for '16."
Andrea Adelson and Heather Dinich did some legwork on this report and produced this article.
Though Bowlsby told CBSSports.com that "there's some belief the ACC would play three divisions, have two highest ranked play in postseason," ACC commissioner John Swofford said as recently as last month that was not even on the table.
Three other ACC sources said there have been no recent discussions about moving to three divisions.
"We haven't really discussed that to any degree of seriousness," Swofford told Dinich last month. "A few years ago, it came up briefly but didn't get legs in our discussions. I think that's unlikely in our league."
More recently, ACC athletic directors have discussed eliminating divisions as one possibility but that has not gained traction, either. For now, the ACC has no plans to change its championship game format.
-- In the AJC, Dabo Swinney and Mark Richt react to Maryland's offer of lifetime scholarships.
"We've been doing that for years - that's old news," Clemson coach Dabo Swinney told the AJC. "We've been doing that forever here at Clemson. We've been doing that since way before I came to Clemson. If you've come to Clemson and you leave, unless there's some kind of issue, you come back here and you finish your degree.
"We've got a guy named Roscoe Crosby here now that signed with Clemson before I got here. He's 31 years old now, and he's back in school. He signed here in 2001. We've been doing that for a long time. I remember when that made news, and I just kind of laughed, to be honest with you. That's going on for a long, long time so I guess people are just now finding out about it. But we have a great university here that does a great job of fulfilling our obligation of graduating our players. It's not an entitlement. Everybody has to do their part. It is a responsibility.
"My philosophy has always been 'I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's CJ Spiller, who leaves here and makes all kinds of money.' Our responsibility is to graduate them, and to pay for that. This university has done that for years and years and years."
-- Patrick Stevens of the Syracuse paper wraps up the season for Clemson basketball and produces the not-so-earth-shattering revelation that the Tigers' offense was erratic.
Program trajectory: Even. You know what you're getting from the Tigers. They defend ferociously, and they struggle to score in the absence of a superior athlete like McDaniels who can create some easy points. The conference records under Brownell have landed the Tigers mostly in the middle of the ACC pack: 9-7, 8-8, 5-13, 10-8 and 8-10.
Clemson's not an easy job, and spending next year playing 45 minutes away in Greenville, S.C., while renovations to Littlejohn Coliseum unfold is a short-term hit. The Tigers are well-coached and committed to defense, which is why they aren't likely to plummet far. But their offense needs to improve considerably, and while Blossomgame and Grantham are interesting pieces, there might not be enough in place to have a serious chance to push further up the standings.
-- Bruce Feldman says Al Golden is going to have to win a lot of games in 2015 to keep his job.
Golden is an underwhelming 28-22 -- and just 16-16 in the ACC -- in four seasons at Miami. He had one of the more talented teams in the country last year if you look at the crop of players that were on the UM team in 2014 and are now moving on to the NFL. Yet, the Canes were just 6-7 and 3-5 in the ACC. And, as I've pointed out in recent months, Golden's had a bunch of double-digit losses and many of them were against unranked opponents.
With that backdrop for his fifth season, I think he has to win at least nine games this fall in hopes of keeping the job. In fact, if UM goes 9-3 but doesn't win its division, I suspect he'll be gone. The schedule isn't ominous. After a trip to FSU, the next toughest road trip is either to Duke, Pitt or Cincy. And Golden does have a terrific young QB to build around in Brad Kaaya, but the D just hasn't been good enough in his time there and it's a stretch to think UM will develop enough to push past FSU and Clemson.
-- What does Paul Johnson think of the possible trend of prospects not signing letters of intent on National Signing Day?
"I don't see that going anywhere," Johnson told the AJC. "I don't think anybody is going to allow that. They (colleges) are going to tell kids that if they don't want to sign their NLI then I'm going to the next kid. It would be chaos. It would be crazy. There would be no signing thing. It would just be nonstop year-round.
"… Some of the stories that I followed with the financial aid, there's a lot of misinformation out there anyways. Because once you go to that school, you're still bound to that school. You get around to the same rules as everybody else. What it does is make the recruiting process go longer, just like the academies (such as Army and Navy). They have that at the academies, and it's ridiculous. You recruit all summer. The academies are different because they don't have a set number of scholarships. You're not trying to hit a target number.
"If you're trying to hit 85, it would be chaos. Because nobody would have an idea of who is going where until school started. Guys would sign two or three different financial-aid agreements. You wouldn't know if they were going to enroll here or there. You'd be disingenuous waiting on them. That would be chaos."
LW
This post was edited on 4/8 9:12 AM by Larry_Williams
