Should FSU bring back Jimbo Fisher? History offers a cautionary tale
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Florida State football is reportedly exploring the possibility of bringing Jimbo Fisher back — and the reaction couldn’t be more divisive.
Fans chanted “We want Jimbo” at Tallahassee’s Doak Campbell Stadium before a Sept. 7 tilt against SMU and booed head coach Mike Norvell during the game.
The Seminoles are now 1-2 this season under Norvell following losses to those ranked SMU and Alabama teams. They went 5-7 last season and 2-10 the year prior. Four of Norvell’s six seasons at the helm have finished with a losing record — Fisher posted a losing record only once in his eight seasons there, going 5-6 before leaving in 2017.
Meanwhile, the online reaction to the Sept. 18 report by The Athletic's Bruce Feldman that FSU was looking at bringing back Fisher was much fierier.
Users on X posted “And he left the program in shambles. He can pound sand.” and “His offense sucked and is outdated… Everyone forgets the begging to give up play calling.” Meanwhile, the managing editor of FSU fan site Warchant.com Ira Schoffel said on YouTube that “you have to have amnesia — or you have been in a coma since 2014 — to think that's the best Florida State can do.”
So, what does college football history say about trying to recreate a successful first act?
USA TODAY dug into the annals of college football and found 18 coaches since 1970 who left a Division I-A or FBS program and then came back for a second stint. The initial data doesn’t favor a Fisher rerun.
Just five of those 18 coaches improved on their first stint’s winning percentage — Mike Riley at Oregon State, Chris Ault at Nevada, Brady Hoke at San Diego State and Jeff Tedford and Jim Sweeney at Fresno State.
Out of those five, all performed worse than Fisher did at FSU between 2010 and 2017. In that stretch, he recorded a winning percentage of .783 with an 83-23 record. Riley went 8-14 (.364), Ault went 145-58-1 (.713), Hoke went 13-12 (.520), Tedford went 26-14 (.650), and Sweeney went 14-8 (.636).
So, for Fisher to join that group, he’ll somehow need to return the Seminoles to the top of college football and then some — a tall order.
However, there is one hopeful sign for a Fisher and FSU reunion.
When comparing a coach’s first three years of their second stint to the program’s last three years before their return, the data appears brighter.
Indeed, six out of the 11 qualifying coaches improved their program’s record compared to the years just before they returned. Seven of the 18 total coaches we analyzed didn’t qualify because their hiatus was shorter than three years, or their return stint was less than three years.
Those six who improved their program are John Robinson at USC, Mack Brown at North Carolina, Greg Schiano at Rutgers, Don Fambrough at Kansas, Bill Snyder at Kansas State and Bill Walsh at Stanford.
This means that by this metric, Fisher wouldn’t need to beat his .783 from almost 10 years ago. Instead, the baseline is Norvell’s 8-19 record — a .296 winning percentage — since the start of 2024, though it will change as the 2026 season continues.
Fisher has never posted a single-season winning percentage as low as .296 in his head-coaching career — so perhaps a return could boost FSU from where the program is currently at.
Should Fisher return, he’ll join a subset of coaches with the longest gaps between coaching stints at a program.
He left the Seminoles in 2017 and will have spent nine intervening seasons at Texas A&M and off the sidelines if he returns to FSU for the 2027 season.
Only five coaches in our dataset had a longer gap.
The longest gap was Brown, who spent 21 seasons between stints at North Carolina. Of the four longer than Fisher's gap whose return lasted at least three seasons, three — Brown, Robinson and Walsh — notched higher winning percentages in their first three seasons back than their programs had over the previous three seasons. However, none improved on their initial stint.
There are also three contemporary coaches doing their own reunion tour. All three are still searching for their past level of success.
Schiano is active at Rutgers. He went 68-67 between 2001 and 2011 but is 31-44 since his return in 2020.
Rich Rodriguez is the second active coach, who went 60-26 for West Virginia between 2001 and 2007. He’s currently 7-8 since rejoining the program last year.
Scott Frost also rejoined a program last season. He was 19-7 at UCF in 2016-17 but has matched Rodriguez at 7-8 in his current stint.
If Fisher joins that trio, will he too be searching for past success? Or will he bring Florida State back to the national forefront? It turns out he'll need to do more than go back in history. He'll need to rewrite it.
Methodology: USA TODAY analyzed College Football Data to identify coaches whose second stint at the same program began in 1970 or later. Interim head coaches and coaches whose first stint occurred entirely below the Division I-A/FBS level were excluded. Coaching records were verified using Sports Reference and school records where necessary. Active coaching records are through Sept. 19, 2026.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Should FSU bring back Jimbo Fisher? History offers a cautionary tale
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