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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 GoFundMecampaigns 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.
Not Taggart's. While most of the college football world might have had Taggart pegged for the dreaded hot seat after going 5-7 in his first season, those at FSU say he's one of the safest coaches around and will get every opportunity to lift the program from an abyss he didn't create.
"We were 5-6 in Jimbo's last season when [Fisher] pulled the ripcord," FSU athletic director Dave Coburn says, referring to a decision late in the 2017 season to reschedule a game against Louisiana-Monroe that had previously been canceled because of Hurricane Irma.
"If we didn't buy that hurricane makeup game, the bowl streak would've ended then."
That's just three years after Fisher had engineered an impressive 29-game winning streak that included a national championship and a spot in the first College Football Playoff.
"We were Clemson before Clemson," a former assistant to Fisher at FSU says. "We were the team that had caught Alabama and was getting ready to pass them.
"Then it all fell off the cliff."
Right into the lap of Taggart, the fresh-faced, 42-year-old former college quarterback who walked into similar scenarios at Western Kentucky, USF and Oregon before leaving the Ducks after one season for his dream job at FSU.
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It's no wonder that Florida State fans have been doing everything from signing petitions to creating Facebook pages to starting GoFundMecampaigns 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.
Not Taggart's. While most of the college football world might have had Taggart pegged for the dreaded hot seat after going 5-7 in his first season, those at FSU say he's one of the safest coaches around and will get every opportunity to lift the program from an abyss he didn't create.
"We were 5-6 in Jimbo's last season when [Fisher] pulled the ripcord," FSU athletic director Dave Coburn says, referring to a decision late in the 2017 season to reschedule a game against Louisiana-Monroe that had previously been canceled because of Hurricane Irma.
"If we didn't buy that hurricane makeup game, the bowl streak would've ended then."
That's just three years after Fisher had engineered an impressive 29-game winning streak that included a national championship and a spot in the first College Football Playoff.
"We were Clemson before Clemson," a former assistant to Fisher at FSU says. "We were the team that had caught Alabama and was getting ready to pass them.
"Then it all fell off the cliff."
Right into the lap of Taggart, the fresh-faced, 42-year-old former college quarterback who walked into similar scenarios at Western Kentucky, USF and Oregon before leaving the Ducks after one season for his dream job at FSU.
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There's more here