Jimbo Fisher says he's 'moving on' from beef with Nick Saban
Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher says he’s ready to move on from his squabble with Alabama’s Nick Saban.
The college football offseason got much more interesting a few weeks ago when Saban alleged that A&M “bought every player on their team” via name, image and likeness deals, prompting a fiery retort from Fisher. The Aggies head coach went scorched earth on his former boss, calling him a “narcissist” and saying Saban’s comments were “despicable” in a quickly arranged news conference the next day.
Saban didn’t back down from the overall sentiment of his comments, which were critical of the current NIL environment as a whole, but he did apologize for singling out A&M and a few other schools.
Fast forward to this week and Saban and Fisher were in the same room together with the rest of the SEC head coaches at the conference’s annual spring meetings in Destin, Florida. Fisher, who was an assistant under Saban at LSU from 2000-2004, previously said their relationship was “done.” On Wednesday, he acknowledged that the two had since spoken.
“It’s over with. We’re done talking about it,” Fisher said per Al.com. “We’re moving on to the future of what goes on and trying to fix the problems we have in college football. There are a lot more pressing needs than our arguments. We’re moving on. I have no problem.”
Fisher said he doesn’t regret anything he said about Saban, but added that he’s ready to “move on to the next thing.”
During that May 19 news conference, Fisher encouraged people to “dig into” how Saban operates.
“Some people think they are God,” Fisher said of Saban. “Go dig into how God did his deal and you may find out a lot about a lot of things you don’t want to know. We build him up to be this czar of football, go dig into his past. You can find out anything you want to find out or what he does or how he does it.”
Nick Saban: 'I have no problem with Jimbo at all'
On Tuesday, Saban said he has “no problem with Jimbo at all” and again reiterated that he should not have singled out Texas A&M and other schools in his comments. He also added that he “didn’t really say that anybody did anything wrong.”
Saban has said multiple times that he is not against players earning money from the use of their name, image and likeness. However, he is leery about the lack of consistent regulations within the current environment around the country.
“I’m not against name, image and likeness. Our players made a lot of money last year. I told our players to get an agent, get representation and make what you can make,” Saban said on SiriusXM Radio last month. “I think the issue in college athletics in general now is the whole system of collectives and people raising money to basically pay players to come, whether it’s to come to their school or pay the players that are on their team.”
