Jimbo Fisher anxious as coaching debut draws near

NCAA Football Betting Lines

09/01/2010 -

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -Jimbo Fisher's last play on a football field was for Samford. His first play as a college coach will be against the same small Alabama school.

After more than two decades as an assistant coach at a handful of southeastern schools, Fisher debuts as Florida State's head coach Saturday when the 20th-ranked Seminoles open their season against the small Baptist-affiliated school in Birmingham where he claims to have enjoyed some of his happiest years.

``That was a great time in my life,'' said Fisher, who played one season for the Bulldogs before joining Terry Bowden's Samford coaching staff. ``Maybe one of the most fun times I've ever had, developing as a person, developing as a coach, building a program. A lot of my roots are there.''

Fisher was the Division III Player of the Year at Samford in 1987 when he threw 34 touchdown passes. He spent the next 11 years on Bowden's staffs at Samford and Auburn, establishing a connection with the coaching family that resulted two decades later in Fisher being the choice to replace Bobby Bowden at Florida State.

Fisher, 44, is not only stepping in behind one of the most successful and revered college coaches of all time, but Saturday marks the first time he'll be in charge of a game as the head coach.

``It's really starting to dawn on me right now,'' Fisher said during Wednesday's Atlantic Coast Conference coaches teleconference, acknowledging he was getting jittery as Saturday's noon kickoff draws nearer. ``Anxious butterflies.''

Fisher, however, can achieve something Bowden failed to do - win his first game at Florida State. Memphis State defeated the Seminoles 21-12 in Bowden's Florida State debut in 1976.

After a 5-6 start in his initial season at Florida State, Bowden finished with a pair of national titles during 33 straight winning seasons.

Samford, which is also Bobby Bowden's alma mater, was known as Howard on its last trip to Tallahassee - 60 years ago with the elder Bowden starting at quarterback.

``It's a banner day for Samford in that it starts off with coach Bowden, playing on a field that's named after a Samford graduate ... a legend,'' Samford coach Pat Sullivan said. ``Then he's been replaced by another Samford graduate. For us to be able to be there, I think it's tremendous for us.''

Fisher knows his Seminoles are a prohibitive favorite against the Football Championship Subdivision school, but he invokes the long-standing coaching standard of saying only nice things about an outgunned opponent.

``You've got to expect a great game,'' he said. ``We've got to stay aggressive.''

After two years as coach in waiting to the iconic Bowden, Fisher was named head coach less than 72 hours after archrival Florida throttled the Seminoles for the sixth straight time, leaving Florida State with a 6-6 regular season record for the second time in four years. A win over West Virginia in the Gator Bowl in Bowden's coaching finale left the Seminoles with a 7-6 record for the third time in the last four years.

Bowden will not attend Fisher's debut Saturday. He has said for years that he wanted to give his successor plenty of space and avoid any second-guessing. Bowden will, however, be in town the previous day for a book signing.

Samford, which is in the Southern Conference, finished 5-6 last year under Sullivan, the former Heisman Trophy winning quarterback from Auburn.

Fisher, a West Virginia native, said earlier this week that he'd prayed for years that one day he'd get an opportunity to coach at a major university. Now that day is here.Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

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In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

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