Good read - The Mess Jimbo Left: Inside FSU's Fall

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The first losing season in four decades. An NCAA-record 36-year bowl streak snapped. The worst academic performance among Power Five conferences.

It's no wonder that Florida State fans have been doing everything from signing petitions to creating Facebook pages to starting GoFundMe campaigns to taking to social media to call for coach Willie Taggart's head.

But want to know who's really to blame for this mess in Tallahassee?

Look no further than former coach Jimbo Fisher.

Fisher, of course, is the man who pushed the program to the very top of the college football mountain not so long ago. But, according to FSU officials and former assistant coaches and players, it's also his fingerprints that are all over the decline.

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Not that Fisher will acknowledge his part in creating that situation. The now-Texas A&M coach told Bleacher Report in May: "I have no comment on that. I loved my time at FSU. We left the program in good shape, with good players."


Others around the program, however, tell a different story.

Many of the issues Taggart inherited, they say, began with the coddling of Jameis Winston, the player who led the Noles to such remarkable heights under Fisher. Those issues eventually bled into a hands-off attitude with academics and placed the program at risk of not complying with NCAA standards and being ineligible to participate in championship events.

Another former assistant under Fisher tells Bleacher Report that by the end of Fisher's reign, coaches were being given one mandate: "Keep the players eligible."

When asked if that was indeed the overriding academic plan, Coburn admits, "It appears that was the case."

Coburn, who worked as chief of staff for FSU president John Thrasher before Thrasher appointed him interim and then permanent athletic director, stops there. He wants to make one thing unequivocally clear: He and Thrasher, the man who ultimately would make any personnel decisions about the football program, are on the same page when it comes to any blame for the state of the team falling on Taggart—and Taggart's unshakable job security.

"I don't know how people can make an evaluation like that from the outside," Coburn continues. "They don't have a clue. It's almost not worth dignifying.

"What's real is there absolutely were locker room issues, and now, too, you can see the [academic] issues. Willie had a lot to deal with, beyond the field, when he got this job, and he's been busy dealing with it. That's [Taggart's] biggest culture change."

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