Editor's note: This story has been updated to include confirmation of Jimbo Fisher's firing by Texas A&M University.

Jimbo Fisher’s arrival at Texas A&M in late 2017 came with immense promise and hype. A national championship-winning coach was coming to one of the largest, most well-resourced schools in the nation’s premier football conference to return a decorated Aggies program to glory.

It never quite worked out that way.

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Texas A&M fired Fisher Sunday morning, as first reported by Aggies insider Billy Liucci and ESPN's Pete Thamel and later confirmed by the university.

"After very careful analysis of all the components related to Texas A&M football, I recommended to president (Mark A. Welsh III) and then chancellor (John Sharp) that a change in the leadership of the program was necessary in order for Aggie football to reach our full potential and they accepted my decision," athletic director Ross Bjork said in a statement. "We appreciate Coach Fisher's time here at Texas A&M and we wish him the best in his future endeavors."

The Texas A&M Board of Regents on Thursday reportedly discussed Fisher's future with the program and is making the decision to part ways following Texas A&M’s 51-10 win Saturday against Mississippi State at Kyle Field in College Station. Fisher, in his sixth season, has seven years remaining on one of the largest, most expensive contracts in college football. Texas A&M is expected to honor Fisher's contract buyout, according to the reports.

Fisher finishes his tenure in College Station with a 45-25 record, giving him a lower win percentage (64.2%) than the coach, Kevin Sumlin, he was hired to replace (66.2%). The Aggies are 6-4 this season, including a 4-3 mark in SEC play.

The move is a seismic one in the sport, not only because an SEC program with a huge fan base and a robust financial infrastructure has changed coaches, but also because Texas A&M is contractually obligated to pay out a buyout of more than $77 million.

To make sense of the Aggies’ decision and what it means for the program, let’s take a deeper look at Fisher’s stint at Texas A&M and what his firing entails for the university:

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Why did Texas A&M fire Jimbo Fisher?

When the Aggies hired Fisher away from Florida State in 2017, it was largely seen as a coup. In Fisher, they seemingly found someone to help them take that much-needed next step to contend with the SEC’s traditional powerhouses.

Fisher revitalized Florida State after it took a dip in legendary coach Bobby Bowden’s final years. In 2013, his fourth season at the school, Fisher and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Jameis Winston guided the Seminoles to a 14-0 mark and the program’s first national championship since 1999.

That success never fully translated to Texas A&M, where Fisher has never won more than nine games in a season. He went 1-5 against SEC West power Alabama and went 3-2 vs. LSU, both programs within his own division that have won national titles since his first season in 2018. He is also 0-1 vs. Kirby Smart's Georgia team, the third SEC program to win a title since Fisher's hiring in College Station.

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Jimbo Fisher record

Fisher was far from a failure, going 45-25 (64.2%) and 27-21 in conference play (56.25%). But he fell considerably short of the expectations that greeted him. He got off to a relatively strong start and appeared to have the Aggies on track to achieve what they brought him in for after going 9-1, winning the Orange Bowl and finishing No. 4 in the Coaches Poll during the COVID-19-impacted 2020 season, his third year at the helm of the program.

What appeared at the time like a sign of things to come was ultimately a high point.

Texas A&M started the next season No. 6 in the preseason Coaches Poll, but finished with a disappointing 8-4 record. Things got even worse in 2022. After bringing in what was empirically measured by some as the best recruiting class in college football history, and yet again carrying a preseason top-10 ranking, the Aggies flopped, finishing 5-7 overall and 2-6 in SEC play, putting them in last place in the SEC West. It was the program’s first losing season since 2009.

The disastrous 2022 campaign illustrated what was perhaps the most glaring issue of Fisher’s ill-fated tenure. A man who was widely acclaimed as an offensive guru regularly trotted out units that underwhelmed. Only Fisher’s 2018 squad, his first team with Texas A&M, finished the season in the top 35 nationally in scoring offense. Those struggles reached a nadir last season, when the Aggies mustered just 22.8 points per game, ranking them 101st among FBS teams.

Fisher hired former Louisville and Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino as his offensive coordinator in the offseason to try to remedy the issue and while the offense has improved – averaging 32.3 points per game – it wasn’t enough to lift the team as a whole.

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Jimbo Fisher Texas A&M contract details

Fisher was lured away from Florida State by a 10-year, $75 million contract from Texas A&M that, at the time, made him just one of three college football coaches making more than $7 million a year (with Alabama’s Nick Saban and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney being the others).

Following that strong 2020 season, he was rewarded on Sept. 1, 2021 — three days before the start of the Aggies’ season — with a 10-year, fully guaranteed contract extension worth $94.95 million. With the reworked deal, Fisher was contractually tied to the school through the 2031 season.

Or more accurately, as Texas A&M leadership has come to learn, the university was tied to Fisher.

His total pay of $9.15 million this season ranks him seventh among all FBS coaches and fourth in the SEC, behind only Saban, Smart and LSU’s Brian Kelly.

Jimbo Fisher buyout

Much of the skepticism over the idea of Texas A&M firing Fisher would be the enormous sum he would be owed should he be fired without cause. Ultimately, that hefty figure wasn’t enough to stop the Aggies from making what they believed to be a necessary move.

Fisher's contract states that if he were to be fired without cause on Dec. 1, 2023, three seasons into that 10-year extension, he is owed a whopping $77.6 million. That figure includes just his pay and not the sum that will also be required to pay the buyouts of his assistant coaches and staff.

Fisher's buyout is the second-largest in college football, behind only Smart.

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Jimbo Fisher year-by-year record

Fisher’s tenure began with justifiable optimism even beyond that 2020 season. In his first three seasons in College Station, he went 26-10, a mark that improved to 29-10 following a 3-0 start to the 2021 season.

Since then, however, the Aggies have gone 16-15.

• 2018: 9-4 (5-3 in SEC play)

• 2019: 8-5 (4-4)

• 2020: 9-1 (8-1)

• 2021: 8-4 (4-4)

• 2022: 5-7 (2-6)

• 2023: 6-4 (4-3)

• Overall: 45-25 (27-21)

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Was Jimbo Fisher fired? Texas A&M coach's record, contract leads to buyout