Fisher may become icon for all that’s wrong with college football

Jimbo Fisher can’t help himself. Or maybe he just chooses not to. It’s difficult to tell sometimes whether the words that tumble out of Fisher’s mouth are the product of typical used-car-salesman denial or just an extreme case of doesn’t-get-it-ness.

“De’Andre Johnson. A 3.5 student. Had never been in trouble in his life. You saw him on ‘Good Morning America’ with his mother. He wasn’t raised that way. He wasn’t coached that way. He was a good guy who made a bad choice.”

See? That’s all De’Andre Johnson did when he punched that woman in a bar. He made a bad choice. A Florida State player punches a woman in the face, and his coach makes it sound like the poor kid just picked out the wrong head of lettuce in Publix.

Florida State players go into clubs on consecutive nights and both get slapped with battery charges. Now Johnson is gone and Dalvin Cook is suspended indefinitely.

There have been other incidents at Florida State. As Fisher correctly points out, that hardly puts them in exclusive company in major college football. But this is the school that pampered and protected quarterback Jameis Winston any number of ways with the assistance of Inspector Clouseau and other members of the Tallahassee Police Department. So FSU is a little higher profile than most. The only question now is whether Fisher is any more of a mercenary than his coaching counterparts.

How bad is a situation when a university president (John Thrasher) feels compelled to address players directly about their conduct in a team meeting, write an open letter to alumni and meet with the editorial board of that city’s newspaper? How big of a problem has something become when a football program suddenly implements a “four-point program” intended to improve athlete behavior and the head coach is moved to ban players from clubs and bars at night?

It’s obvious Fisher can coach. But if Fisher isn’t careful, this program will devolve into everybody’s Exhibit A of everything that is wrong with major college football.

Coaches and school officials need to take their eyes off the scoreboard and have a higher level of accountability.