Jimbo Fisher wishes he could find a way to stop tampering

Jimbo Fisher, like most of his peers, wants to see an end to NIL-fueled roster tampering in college football. Speaking at SEC spring meetings to reporters, the Texas A&M coach aired his frustrations.

Fisher pointed out that professional leagues manage to police things like tampering, the policies around which get ironed out among teams and players in the various leagues. While there are rules prohibiting contact players on other rosters and such, Fisher bemoaned how widespread and out of control it’s getting.

“The NFL deals with it, don’t they? Major League Baseball deals with it. That’s something that, I wish you could. Because I think that is an issue. I think that is a big issue. And it’s unfair to different levels of schools,” Fisher said.

Ultimately, Fisher seems to be upset with the lack of enforcement and policing.

For tampering to be sussed out, coaches and players need to be willing to report it and the NCAA or other requisite governing bodies would need to be paying attention, too.

Some or all of that isn’t happening as of now.

“If you got caught cheating, it’s the same scenario. If you get caught, you get caught. However they can catch you and whatever they can do. And I think that’s one of the big problems we do have right now, is tampering. And it needs to be addressed,” Fisher said.

Fisher discussed some other hot-button issues of the day

As gambling has become an increasing area of concern across college sports, Fisher compared the matter to the pros. Specifically, Fisher spoke on the idea of college teams adding official injury reports and how that would affect bettors.

More than half of Unites States has now legalized sports betting, and the extra information from an injury report could help the average person to stay more informed. Fisher explained how he has already seen people trying to find ways to get the information without it readily available to the public.

“It’s amazing how the folks who gamble already know it before any injury report’s out,” he said at the SEC Spring Meetings. “They know stuff sometimes before we know stuff. As crazy as that sounds, even their families, ‘oh, so-and-so was banged up today’ or ‘he pulled a hamstring today.’ It’s funny because they always have people around your campuses and you know your kids and who they’re talking to. I’m just going by what people are telling me that people have the vast amount of information they have.”