Does Rick Trickett's Contract Extension Intensify the Mess Brewing at FSU

With news trickling in that FSU will possibly be starting a walk-on at right tackle (more on this in a second) and that Clint Trickett, whose role on this team I’ve discussed in multiple articles, is being listed as the No. 1 quarterback on the depth chart, things are already starting to heat up in Tallahassee.

On Tuesday, more fuel was added to the fire, when it was announced that Rick Trickett was given a three-year contract extension. Rick Trickett, whose failures and shortcomings at FSU seem to know no boundaries, was actually given a contract extension, even after recently reeling in an offensive line recruiting class that started off as promising but, as usual, imploded and turned into another class of 2- and 3-star players who were not wanted by anyone else—Ira Denson being the lone exception.

Not many months removed from his unit being emasculated and humiliated by the Florida Gators at Doak Campbell Stadium, the “legendary” Rick Trickett was “rewarded” with a three-year contract extension.

It doesn’t make any sense—feel free to go to YouTube and watch his units get embarrassed against average and above-average competition—but it did happen.

Rick Trickett is here to stay.

What’s the fallout, though? How bad is it going to get? How much of an impact will this news have on the program?

At the very least it's going to hurt ticket sales, which were going to be a problem anyway, considering FSU’s schedule. Increasingly it’s going to be a struggle for head coach Jimbo Fisher to appeal to the fanbase—or get people interested in the program—when he has one assistant who single-handedly is ruining the team’s chances at winning a national championship.

And, as mentioned earlier, if FSU does wind up with a walk-on starting at right tackle—former 2-star recruit Bryan Stork cannot move to right tackle because his backup, former 2-star recruit Austin Barron, is too small to play center—the Seminole community will probably be outraged, which will also hurt ticket sales. It’s just hard to motivate people not living in Tallahassee to come watch a collection of former 2- and 3-star offensive linemen, arguably the most important unit on a team, get led by an embarrassingly underachieving coach who once ran into an official (and was flagged), because he was so excited that his unit moved the ball against the Demon Deacons of Wake Forest.

It doesn’t stop there, either.  One can only imagine how empty the seats will be if Clint Trickett, the son of Rick Trickett and the current No. 1 on the depth chart at quarterback, lines up under center come fall.

Despite efforts by Jimbo Fisher to defend his decision to offer a scholarship to Clint Trickett, no one really understands why, of all the quarterbacks in Clint’s class, he was the best that FSU could land. So couple that with the news of Rick Trickett’s contract extension and the fact that FSU may have a walk-on starting at right tackle, and one can clearly see that a mess is brewing in Tallahassee.

Fisher has created this mess, and it should be an interesting course of events that unfold during the next few months.

Hopefully, I’m wrong, people will attend the games in great numbers and the program won’t suffer too much. But when the standards continue to be set so low, it’s hard to see things turning out any other way.