The Far-Reaching Impact of Jimbo Fisher's Loyalty to Jameis Winston

LOS ANGELES — There are times when doing the wrong thing is the right thing. There is safety in it. It pays.

Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher has shocked people this season with his seemingly clumsy and overly staunch defense of everything Jameis Winston did or was accused of doing. Fisher came across as the great enabler, a cliche of a coach who would pull the wool over anyone's eyes for the team.   

From everyone's perspective outside the Florida State bubble, he willingly put the black hat on his own program. What was the impact of Fisher's approach?

Florida State is in the College Football Playoff semifinals against Oregon on Thursday. It hasn't lost a game all year. Top recruits are still coming. And Fisher? He got a shiny new eight-year contract.

Eight years. Well played, Jimbo Fisher.

"Would you want your boss to have your back if you were right?" Fisher asked Saturday at the CFP media day. "Would you want your wife to have your back if you were right? Would you want your mom or dad to have your back if you were right?

"As a coach, we're like a father figure to those guys. When they're wrong, we address, we punish, we move on. When they're right, you fight like heck for them, and that's our role as coaches."

Phil Sears/Associated Press

Sounds like something he will say in family rooms to recruits' mothers.

In fact, when Florida State beat out Alabama for top running back recruit Jacques Patrick, the kid mentioned that Fisher's defense of Winston was a selling point.

"My mom was the one that really reacted to it," Patrick said in an interview with Warchant TV (subscription required). "She knows I'm going to be in good hands when I get up there, and that's the most important thing."

There was risk in this. But it's not that Fisher is tone-deaf, as NFL.com's Chase Goodbread suggested. It was a calculated decision.

It was exactly what the sports world demanded of him, and he could see it from the start. The national image of Florida State was expendable. It was an acceptable casualty.

So I asked Fisher on Sunday at the CFP media day how important that image is and what he does to uphold it.

"You've just got to keep doing things right," he said. "We feel like we do things right. So we've just got to keep doing it. In time, everything will handle itself."

Someone asked him if he has made any changes in his handling of that image.

"We feel our program is as good as anybody in America and we have great kids," he said. "We have better kids than we have players on our team."

Mark Wallheiser/Associated Press

There was never any wavering. When he said there was no victim because there was no crime, in light of the rape allegation against Winston, that came off—again, outside the bubble—as so insensitive to a woman who was claiming she had been violated (no charges were filed).

But it was other things too—stealing crab legs, damage caused by BB guns. Jump on a table in a cafeteria and yell things that are offensive to women? Fisher suspended Winston for half a game, and when the school upped it to a whole game, according to ESPN's Elizabeth Merrill, Fisher threatened to quit because he was angry that the school was caving to public pressure.

See? He was willing to tarnish the image for the sake of showing unity and keeping his team together.

And he winds up making millions of dollars as a result. While financial details haven't been released, Corey Clark of the Tallahassee Democrat said Fisher's annual salary is expected to increase from about $4 million to $5 million.

The impact is this: Fisher wins. I'm not talking about ethics and decency. At Texas, new coach Charlie Strong has taken a tough, policing approach. We'll have to see how that works out for him.

But Fisher has set himself and his program up for an even better future.

It was no accident.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.