Jimbo Fisher wants to get back into coaching and, in other news, water is wet.
Fisher, who will be spending his third season on the ACC Network as part of their pregame coverage team, has made it public over the past few weeks that he's open to work and even inquired about the Auburn job opening that eventually went to Alex Golesh.
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The former FSU and Texas A&M coach will be 61 in October, so he's at that age where there's probably one more job out there for him, but if it's going to happen, it's got to happen in the next 12 months. It's assumed that if Fisher gets another job, it will be somewhere in the region or close enough to where he can recruit Florida, specifically south Florida, but the Miami Hurricanes program is better equipped to handle it these days.
Miami is more than ready to neutralize Jimbo Fisher on the trail
If Fisher comes down to the Hurricanes backyard and expects to clean up like he did during his days at FSU, he will be disappointed. Miami no longer has the albatross of Nevin Shapiro or the passive ways of Randy Shannon and Al Golden. Mario Cristobal has shown that he plays for keeps when it comes to recruiting in his backyard.
Fisher will no longer be able to grab the legendary haul of athletes from the tri-county area that he did in the 2010s. Players like Lamarcus Joiner, Nick O'Leary, Rashad Greene, Devonta Freeman and Dalvin Cook. In those days, Fisher, along with staffers like Mark Stoops, Eddie Gran and James Coley, were able to bully around Miami and take what they wanted.
The best way to deal with bullies is to push them back and Cristobal represents the pushback that the Hurricanes didn't have in those days.
There are a few jobs that I believe could be opportunities for Fisher's return. North Carolina would likely be in the picture if the Belichick experiment fails to produce. Maryland is another job that could see being linked to Fisher and I believe that if Scott Frost can't do anything better than what he's doing at UCF, that program would be very interested in Fisher.
None of these programs should strike fear in Miami. UCF doesn't hold the same cache that FSU did and while Miami has certainly had its issues with North Carolina since joining the ACC, the Tar Heels have never really had much of a presence in South Florida. Maryland is not in the ACC, so there wouldn't be direct competition, but if Fisher took the Terrapins job, you could expect that program to be a lot more active in south Florida.
And what about a return to FSU? I guess it's possible, but I just don't see it. There are a lot of hard feelings there and a lot of distrust on both sides. But regardless of Fisher's future, it's not going to be anything for Miami to worry about while Cristobal is running the show. The Hurricanes program wasn't prepared for Fisher's ascension in the 2010s, and they lost a decade of relevancy because of it. This time, Miami is the power school, and it will not hesitate to flex those muscles.
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