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Paul Finebaum, Matt Barrie unpack the Texas A&M media circus with Mark Stoops
Paul Finebaum and Matt Barrie weighed in after a crazy night involving Texas A&M and Mark Stoops.
Late Saturday night, it seemed Stoops would be the Aggies’ next head coach, but a few hours later the deal was not done and Stoops remains at Kentucky.
When Texas A&M’s coaching search began a few weeks ago, Finebaum assumed that the Aggies had someone in mind for their next head coach, but that proved to not be true.
“I’d just assume that they had a good plan when they got rid of Jimbo, cause they didn’t fire Jimbo today, which is when a lot of coaches get fired, they fired him, what, 2 weeks ago,” Finebaum said on the Matt Barrie Show Sunday. “I’m assuming they already had somebody lined up. My assumptions was incorrect.”
Finebaum believes that the Stoops deal didn’t go through after Texas A&M saw the revolt from fans after the news broke. Finebaum said that Stoops is a good coach, but he’s not sure if the Kentucky head coach would have met the expectations at Texas A&M.
“I think what you have out there, is you have a lot of really proud people who have a piece of that program, and it’s a familiar story,” Finebaum said. “I haven’t talked to Ross Bjork, I don’t really know what his mindset is, but I’m sure he’s trying to regroup, because he’s the one who has put a lot of things out there about, we’re not an 8-4 program. With Mark Stoops, Mark Stoops did a good job at Kentucky, but is that a preamble that he would do a good job at a higher-profile, much more difficult job than Kentucky. He exceeded expectations at Kentucky, but I think he’s better off staying where he is. I don’t know what these next couple hours look like for A&M.”
Barrie believes that because Texas A&M fired Jimbo Fisher, the pressure is on to get a coach who will do a better job.
“You had better make sure that the guy you’re getting rid of, the one that’s coming in better be better,” Barrie said. “You had better make sure that that next coach — you need to have a plan in place. Who are you gonna get. You need to be 100% certain that the next head coach is better than the one you just fired. And here we are with Texas A&M after the Mark Stoops debacle. They couldn’t get Dan Lanning, they couldn’t get Dan Campbell, they probably made a run at Dabo, Ryan Day, the big names. So you can’t do that in this day and age. Are they gonna get better, that’s the question.”