I think that it would be a good career move for Fisher. He has the offensive coordinator thing as good as its going to get on a resume. It is tough to get a top college head coaching job without being a head coach first. He could couple his coordinating accomplishments with success as a head coach. North Texas is a great opportunity as a coach. You play in the worst conference so you have a better chance to win than if you are coaching a team like Vanderbilt or Northwestern which has built in disadvantages to the top teams in the division. The best team in the Sun Belt only won 7 of 12 games this year, so there is good opportunity to excel above that. You have a great opportunity to recruit. He has been recruiting Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi for a while, which is the recruiting for North Texas. Texas has so many three star players and above that I would think you could recruit well there. It is in a good location on the northern part of the Dallas area. You can pick up a bunch of lower 3 star TX recruits and promising 2 stars and fill out your class with OK, LA, AR, and MS. There is real potential to dominate recruiting vs. the other teams in the conference. If he can get a good defensive coordinator, he could do real well. He can handle the offense. He can site all the quarterbacks that he's mentored that have gone on get drafted in the NFL: Booty, Davey, Mauck, Russell, and maybe Flynn and Perrilloux. If you can outrecruit your conference and have good coaching, there is great potential. If he wins a bunch of conference championships and bowl games coupled with his coordinating experience at a big time successful program, he would be in line for a top college head coaching job right from North Texas. I'd rather a place you can win like North Texas, than a more challenging place like Mississippi State or Baylor. Sun Belt Standings TEAM CONF. W-L OVERALL W-L Middle Tennessee State 6-1 7-5 Troy 6-1 7-5 Arkansas State 4-3 6-6 Florida Atlantic 4-3 5-7 Louisiana-Lafayette 3-4 6-6 Louisiana-Monroe 3-4 4-8 North Texas 2-5 3-9 Florida International 0-7 0-12
This offer makes much more sense to me than what's been floating around. This is about the level of team that I thought Jimbo could conceivably land. I don't think any legit/high level 1-A school will hire Jimbo with no experience as a HC.
I think he may get the Cincy job. He was the OC there in 1999. I'm fairly confident that Fisher will not be at LSU next year.
Well if he does leave, we will finally see who is the conservative one on staff when running the offense. Plus I believe the offense runs many plays too many times in a game and don't have a very large playbook. Now is this Jimbo or Miles? I guess we will see. However, if JR stays I hope Jimbo stays so that the offense doesn't have to learn a new system and plays. I wonder if JR's decision has any affect on Jimbo's decision. I think LSU stands a better chance next season at going to NCG than they ever did this year with an easier schedule and that would look really nice to have 2 NC titles on his resume while guiding a great QB.
Jimbo has been a head coach candidate for about four years and we are lucky that he has stayed this long. He has turned down head coach offers from Delaware and Mississippi State in the past. That would indicate that he is looking for a stepping stone job, not a coaches graveyard. Smart. LSU pays Jimbo very well and most smaller programs cannot pay him enough to leave his LSU OC job. Cincinatti and North Texas State probably can, so I imagine that it's a matter of whether Jimbo considers one of them to be a place that he can win and later earn him the SEC upper-tier job that he really wants. Jimbo would like to be head coach at LSU or Auburn, but he learned when Nick left that he was going to need some head coaching experience to land a job like that. Now is probably the time for Jimbo to goo get that experience.
Cincinnati, would seem to be the place for that experince. They are really wanting a football program to match Basketball. He would be given the resources to run with.
Mack Brown didn't go straight to Tex. as head coach, not even straight to N. Carolina. When he left LSU as Off. Coor. he became head coach at Appalachian St. Later he was head coach at Tulane, and from there, N. Carolina. Sometimes you have to work your way up. Mark Richt went from OC at FSU to head coach at Georgia, so it can be done. But I think the high powered offense they ran at FSU had more reknown than Jimbo's offense at LSU. We've been known more for our defense than our offense. We've had good offenses, but no overpowering. Jimbo may be the next Mark Richt, but if I was hiring, I would not see it that way.
