Texas A&M football: After Miami debacle, should Jimbo Fisher stay or should he go?
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The end of the Jimbo Fisher Era could be near at Texas A&M.
ESPN college football analyst and talk show host Paul Finebaum illustrated on The Matt Barrie Show what could be the driving force.
In addition to his failure to lift the Aggies to elite status, far from it in fact, Fisher could ultimately fall victim to Texas’ surge into the spotlight after the Longhorns’ dismantling of an Alabama program that has been the measuring stick for all others for at least the past decade.
Texas has risen to the level that Texas A&M was pining for when it lost its mind over Fisher, certain that the former national championship head coach at Florida State could and would turn the trick for all of Aggieland. The Longhorns have arrived, just in time to join with and compete in the SEC. And in just the 3rd season with Steve Sarkisian, the former offensive coordinator under Nick Saban at Alabama.
To Finebaum’s point, Texas’ rise, coupled with a floundering program in College Station, puts even more pressure on Fisher and the level, or lack thereof, he has elevated the Aggies to over his 5-plus seasons in College Station.
The Longhorns are now 2-0 and ranked 4th in the latest AP poll. Texas A&M is 1-1 after the debacle in South Florida last Saturday and is nowhere to be found in the rankings it thought it would be a fixture of.
The Clash first asked the question — and now it appropriately raises its ugly head in the Lone Star State — “Should (he) stay or should (he) go?”
Is it time?
Is it time for Texas A&M to admit it made the biggest mistake in college football history relative to money and contract?
Is it time to cut bait and move on?
Rip off the band-aid? Close their eyes and swallow the bitter pill?
Yeah, it is.
It’s time to pull the plug on this experiment. It isn’t going anywhere. It’s reached its ceiling.
It was a nice try; it just didn’t work out. And would it be just too easy to slide new OC Bobby Petrino down from the press box to the playing field as the Aggies’ interim head coach for the remainder of this season?
It’s becoming clear that this is the path the Aggies should take.
Fisher brought in the talent. He did the groundwork. But it just didn’t come together.
He didn’t have Jameis Winston to run the show. That’s generational talent that seems to have eluded Aggieland, at least during Fisher’s tenure.
He just didn’t connect with his teams, it appeared. He didn’t inject any type of juice into the program. In a sport where emotion plays such a vital role, Fisher’s teams appeared bored and more business-like than inspired — even confused at times.
And the way he rode his quarterbacks, berating them often and always getting in their faces after each series, had to be discouraging for them and a bad look to the rest of the team. It only makes it more difficult to be a leader on the field when your coach is constantly chewing at your backside.
No, for many reasons, things just haven’t worked out for Fisher at Texas A&M, not to the level that was expected. And it’s certainly understandable that they’ve ridden with him for this long, given the unprecedented contract they gifted him.
But with Texas riding into the SEC, guns blazing, it’s time the Aggies make a bold move or risk the possibility of falling back into Little Brother Status once again after working so hard to overcome that stigma.
Glenn Sattell is an award-winning freelance writer for Saturday Down South.
