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Posted on: November 12, 2023 at 21:23:17 CT
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Texas A&M football coaching job pluses, minuses and candidates after Jimbo Fisher firing
https://theathletic.com/5056159/2023/11/12/texas-am-football-coaching-job/
By Chris Vannini
Nov 12, 2023
Texas A&M is firing Jimbo Fisher, ending an underwhelming run with by far the largest buyout in college football history and owing Fisher more than $75 million.
Fisher went 45-25 in College Station, a worse record than his predecessor Kevin Sumlin (51-26). Fisher won nine games twice in six seasons but never more than that. The Aggies went 9-1 in the pandemic-impacted 2020 season, earning a top-five finish. His contract was extended after the season, raising the buyout to an even higher level.
Under Fisher, Texas A&M recruited better than it ever had before, including the highest-rated class of the internet recruiting rankings era in 2022, but it didn’t translate into notable wins.
This is a job with high expectations and a school willing to pay to meet them. But it’s also a program that has only rarely reached its potential. This is the kind of move that can create a domino effect throughout a coaching carousel.
So how good is the Texas A&M job? What names could get in the mix? Here are the factors to keep in mind.
How much more money is Texas A&M actually willing to pay?
On top of the $75 million or so owed to Fisher, millions more will be owed to any assistant coaches let go. There will also be millions owed to a new staff, potentially including a buyout paid to the next head coach’s previous school. It’s not unreasonable that this entire change will cost Texas A&M $100 million in total, even if Fisher’s buyout is spread out over a long period of time. That doesn’t include the NIL money that may be needed to keep talented current players around.
At that point, does the money even feel real anymore? A&M made the change now because getting a few million shaved off the buyout for Fisher next year wasn’t worth waiting around for. We know what oil and energy money can do. We just saw SMU raise $100 million in a week to assist in the program’s upcoming move to the ACC. Texas A&M has more money and a lot more people.
The previous known record for a buyout paid to a college coach was $21.45 million from Auburn to Gus Malzahn after the 2020 season, but this is a new stratosphere. You don’t pay $75 million-plus to get rid of a coach and go cheap on the next hire.
Will this talented roster stay together?
From 2019 to 2022, Texas A&M signed four recruiting classes ranked in the top eight by 247Sports, including that 2022 class which was the highest-rated ever. There has been a good amount of attrition, but Texas A&M still entered the 2023 season No. 4 in 247’s Team Talent Rankings, which ranks teams by the recruiting rankings of their players.
But with Fisher out, players can enter the transfer portal at any time over the next 30 days. That’ll send us into the normal transfer window period, which opens on Dec. 4. In today’s game, it’s impossible to predict the roster the next head coach will take over. Will talented quarterback Conner Weigman still be there? What about those other five-star recruits? We’ll have to wait and see.
Texas A&M is on top of the NIL game
Aggie boosters have led the charge in pushing the envelope of what’s allowed, to the point where the 12th Man Foundation shut down its collective NIL arm earlier this year. Remember when Nick Saban said Texas A&M bought its entire recruiting class amid rumors that boosters spent tens of millions on that 2022 class?
It wasn’t quite like that, but A&M has been at the forefront of this game. The group that had been informally kept quiet as “The Fund” became more public as Texas Aggies United earlier this year. The next coach will have the money to keep Texas A&M recruiting at a very high level.
Are the expectations fair?
Texas A&M has not won a conference championship since 1998 under R.C. Slocum. It has won more than nine games just once since then: the 11-2 2012 season when Johnny Manziel came out of nowhere to win the Heisman Trophy.
For all the hundreds of millions thrown into this program over the past decade, it hasn’t been any more successful on the field. The Athletic’s Sam Khan wrote earlier this year about the six leading theories on why the Aggies haven’t put it all together. They included administrative instability, poor coaching hires, settling for less, the SEC move, bad luck and the hope it’ll eventually work out.
Texas A&M got a decade-long head start on Texas with all the SEC advantages. The Aggies squandered it, and now the Longhorns are coming into the league with a better team. History shows Texas A&M typically hasn’t gotten it done. Will that ever change?
So what names could get in the mix?
Because of the money and resources, nothing is off the table.
Duke head coach Mike Elko knows the school as Texas A&M’s defensive coordinator from 2018 to 2021. He’s 15-7 at Duke since taking over a three-win program. He has recruited at the highest level and immediately overachieved at Duke, including knocking off Clemson this year and winning nine games last season. The 46-year-old New Jersey native had spent much of his career at the lower levels of college football but quickly rose up from Wake Forest to Notre Dame to Texas A&M and then the Duke head coaching job over the last decade. The biggest question: Do you want to replace Fisher with his former assistant? Duke, a football school? The man behind the resurgent, gridiron Blue Devils
Oregon head coach Dan Lanning is likely to get a look, but he has a $20 million buyout to leave the Ducks, as part of a new contract this year. The 37-year-old Lanning is 19-4 at Oregon, including a 9-1 start this year. He has coached at Alabama and Georgia and is one of the best recruiters in the country; the Ducks currently have the No. 6 class in the 2024 cycle. Lanning is a very aggressive coach in every aspect, including on the field. Of his four losses, three have come by one score in which a fourth-down conversion could have won the game for Oregon. He knows big-time football and doesn’t shy away from it. But is that buyout, on top of a new salary, too much? And with Oregon having Nike resources and joining the Big Ten, would he even want to leave?
Elsewhere in the Pac-12, Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer is also winning big in his second season and wouldn’t be as expensive to pull away; he has a $12 million buyout to leave the Huskies. DeBoer is 21-2 in Seattle, including a 10-0 start to this season with Heisman Trophy frontrunner Michael Penix Jr. at quarterback. While Lanning came from some of the top programs in the country, DeBoer took the opposite path, coming to Washington after stops at Fresno State, Indiana, Eastern Michigan and Sioux Falls. He went 67-3 as an NAIA head coach at Sioux Falls, with three national championships in five years. He clearly knows how to win and win a lot. Can he recruit at the highest level? Washington has largely been behind in the NIL space relative to others. At Texas A&M, he wouldn’t be limited by resources.
Would Florida State head coach Mike Norvell be interested, and would A&M hire another FSU coach? Norvell very much has the Seminoles on the rise, as an undefeated College Football Playoff contender this year. He rebuilt the program that fell apart late in Fisher’s tenure. Does that situation sound familiar? The 42-year-old Norvell is also from Texas, and he took Memphis to two 10-win seasons and a Cotton Bowl appearance in 2019. Florida State has been very public about its concerns of competing with the SEC and Big Ten in the near future, due to a revenue gap. Is that a reason for Norvell to consider leaving? He currently makes around $8 million annually. His buyout would be $6 million.
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz came into this season on a bit of a hot seat, but the Tigers are 8-2 and just dominated Tennessee in a 36-7 win. The 40-year-old Drinkwitz is 37-22 as a coach and has shown he can win big when he’s got the talent. The Tigers have signed some of their highest-ranked recruiting classes in school history under Drinkwitz, and that talent has started to show this year, led by former five-star wide receiver Luther Burden III, who was part of the 2022 class.
UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor is as Texas as it gets. He’s a former legendary high school coach at Gilmer, and he’s 36-13 as the Roadrunners’ head coach, including a 25-3 mark in conference play. The 55-year-old Traylor won 12 and 11 games, respectively, in 2021 and 2022 at a school that had never won more than seven as an FBS program. It’s likely by the end of this season that Traylor will have led UTSA to its four best seasons ever. He also coached at Texas from 2015 to ’16 and Arkansas from 2018 to ’19, so he has worked at the highest level. He knows everyone in the state, and he knows how to handle the political strings. The question is whether Texas A&M feels it can hire a Group of 5 coach.
Kansas head coach Lance Leipold has won wherever he’s been. He claimed six Division III national championships in eight years at Wisconsin-Whitewater, won two MAC East division titles at Buffalo and quickly brought Kansas its most success in more than a decade. The 59-year-old Leipold took over a winless program, got it to a bowl game in Year 2 and led Kansas to a win over Oklahoma in late October. He has 15 wins in three seasons; Kansas won 16 games over the previous nine years combined. His buyout to leave Lawrence is $6 million. The question is whether Leipold can recruit at the highest level.
Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman has similarly won wherever he’s been, with a 109-36 record as a head coach, four FCS national titles in five years at North Dakota State and a Big 12 championship at Kansas State last year. His teams play very tough and creatively at K-State, and he is 3-1 against Oklahoma. Similarly, the question would be his ability to recruit at the highest level, as he’d never been a full-time FBS assistant until he got the K-State job.
Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck’s name has come up for several bigger jobs in recent years. He’s 49-31 at Minnesota after taking Western Michigan to a 13-1 season and a Cotton Bowl appearance in 2016. The 42-year-old Fleck took the Gophers to 11 wins in 2019, the program’s most since 1904 and its first top-10 finish since 1962, and they won nine games in both ’21 and ’22. But this year’s team has slipped to 5-5. The high-energy Fleck would be interesting in a job with unlimited resources.
Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch has taken Arizona from 1-11 to 7-3 in three seasons, and the program continues to trend upward. He has coached all over the country, from Michigan to UCLA to several stints in the NFL, and Arizona’s recruiting has improved dramatically since he took over, including landing wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, the highest-ranked recruit in school history. He also knows how to help quarterbacks, an area that has held Texas A&M back.
Would former Ohio State and Florida head coach Urban Meyer be interested? The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported last month that there was no truth in the rumors linking Meyer to Michigan State and that he wasn’t interested (nor was it clear the interest was real on the other side). But Meyer has won national championships when he’s had the most talent and resources. That’s something Texas A&M can provide. However, we’ve also seen the pressure of the big jobs wear down Meyer’s health. Meyer would also have to show he can work in the new era of college football. He didn’t have NIL and the portal at his previous jobs.
Someone who likely wouldn’t get the job but could get an interview is Houston Texans quarterbacks coach Jerrod Johnson. A former Texas A&M quarterback, Johnson has helped C.J. Stroud become one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL in his rookie season. Johnson began coaching in 2017 and has quickly moved up to lead a position group this year. He’s not far away for an interview, just down the road in Houston.
(Photo: Logan Riely / Getty Images)
https://theathletic.com/5056159/2023/11/12/texas-am-football-coaching-job/
By Chris Vannini
Nov 12, 2023
Texas A&M is firing Jimbo Fisher, ending an underwhelming run with by far the largest buyout in college football history and owing Fisher more than $75 million.
Fisher went 45-25 in College Station, a worse record than his predecessor Kevin Sumlin (51-26). Fisher won nine games twice in six seasons but never more than that. The Aggies went 9-1 in the pandemic-impacted 2020 season, earning a top-five finish. His contract was extended after the season, raising the buyout to an even higher level.
Under Fisher, Texas A&M recruited better than it ever had before, including the highest-rated class of the internet recruiting rankings era in 2022, but it didn’t translate into notable wins.
This is a job with high expectations and a school willing to pay to meet them. But it’s also a program that has only rarely reached its potential. This is the kind of move that can create a domino effect throughout a coaching carousel.
So how good is the Texas A&M job? What names could get in the mix? Here are the factors to keep in mind.
How much more money is Texas A&M actually willing to pay?
On top of the $75 million or so owed to Fisher, millions more will be owed to any assistant coaches let go. There will also be millions owed to a new staff, potentially including a buyout paid to the next head coach’s previous school. It’s not unreasonable that this entire change will cost Texas A&M $100 million in total, even if Fisher’s buyout is spread out over a long period of time. That doesn’t include the NIL money that may be needed to keep talented current players around.
At that point, does the money even feel real anymore? A&M made the change now because getting a few million shaved off the buyout for Fisher next year wasn’t worth waiting around for. We know what oil and energy money can do. We just saw SMU raise $100 million in a week to assist in the program’s upcoming move to the ACC. Texas A&M has more money and a lot more people.
The previous known record for a buyout paid to a college coach was $21.45 million from Auburn to Gus Malzahn after the 2020 season, but this is a new stratosphere. You don’t pay $75 million-plus to get rid of a coach and go cheap on the next hire.
Will this talented roster stay together?
From 2019 to 2022, Texas A&M signed four recruiting classes ranked in the top eight by 247Sports, including that 2022 class which was the highest-rated ever. There has been a good amount of attrition, but Texas A&M still entered the 2023 season No. 4 in 247’s Team Talent Rankings, which ranks teams by the recruiting rankings of their players.
But with Fisher out, players can enter the transfer portal at any time over the next 30 days. That’ll send us into the normal transfer window period, which opens on Dec. 4. In today’s game, it’s impossible to predict the roster the next head coach will take over. Will talented quarterback Conner Weigman still be there? What about those other five-star recruits? We’ll have to wait and see.
Texas A&M is on top of the NIL game
Aggie boosters have led the charge in pushing the envelope of what’s allowed, to the point where the 12th Man Foundation shut down its collective NIL arm earlier this year. Remember when Nick Saban said Texas A&M bought its entire recruiting class amid rumors that boosters spent tens of millions on that 2022 class?
It wasn’t quite like that, but A&M has been at the forefront of this game. The group that had been informally kept quiet as “The Fund” became more public as Texas Aggies United earlier this year. The next coach will have the money to keep Texas A&M recruiting at a very high level.
Are the expectations fair?
Texas A&M has not won a conference championship since 1998 under R.C. Slocum. It has won more than nine games just once since then: the 11-2 2012 season when Johnny Manziel came out of nowhere to win the Heisman Trophy.
For all the hundreds of millions thrown into this program over the past decade, it hasn’t been any more successful on the field. The Athletic’s Sam Khan wrote earlier this year about the six leading theories on why the Aggies haven’t put it all together. They included administrative instability, poor coaching hires, settling for less, the SEC move, bad luck and the hope it’ll eventually work out.
Texas A&M got a decade-long head start on Texas with all the SEC advantages. The Aggies squandered it, and now the Longhorns are coming into the league with a better team. History shows Texas A&M typically hasn’t gotten it done. Will that ever change?
So what names could get in the mix?
Because of the money and resources, nothing is off the table.
Duke head coach Mike Elko knows the school as Texas A&M’s defensive coordinator from 2018 to 2021. He’s 15-7 at Duke since taking over a three-win program. He has recruited at the highest level and immediately overachieved at Duke, including knocking off Clemson this year and winning nine games last season. The 46-year-old New Jersey native had spent much of his career at the lower levels of college football but quickly rose up from Wake Forest to Notre Dame to Texas A&M and then the Duke head coaching job over the last decade. The biggest question: Do you want to replace Fisher with his former assistant? Duke, a football school? The man behind the resurgent, gridiron Blue Devils
Oregon head coach Dan Lanning is likely to get a look, but he has a $20 million buyout to leave the Ducks, as part of a new contract this year. The 37-year-old Lanning is 19-4 at Oregon, including a 9-1 start this year. He has coached at Alabama and Georgia and is one of the best recruiters in the country; the Ducks currently have the No. 6 class in the 2024 cycle. Lanning is a very aggressive coach in every aspect, including on the field. Of his four losses, three have come by one score in which a fourth-down conversion could have won the game for Oregon. He knows big-time football and doesn’t shy away from it. But is that buyout, on top of a new salary, too much? And with Oregon having Nike resources and joining the Big Ten, would he even want to leave?
Elsewhere in the Pac-12, Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer is also winning big in his second season and wouldn’t be as expensive to pull away; he has a $12 million buyout to leave the Huskies. DeBoer is 21-2 in Seattle, including a 10-0 start to this season with Heisman Trophy frontrunner Michael Penix Jr. at quarterback. While Lanning came from some of the top programs in the country, DeBoer took the opposite path, coming to Washington after stops at Fresno State, Indiana, Eastern Michigan and Sioux Falls. He went 67-3 as an NAIA head coach at Sioux Falls, with three national championships in five years. He clearly knows how to win and win a lot. Can he recruit at the highest level? Washington has largely been behind in the NIL space relative to others. At Texas A&M, he wouldn’t be limited by resources.
Would Florida State head coach Mike Norvell be interested, and would A&M hire another FSU coach? Norvell very much has the Seminoles on the rise, as an undefeated College Football Playoff contender this year. He rebuilt the program that fell apart late in Fisher’s tenure. Does that situation sound familiar? The 42-year-old Norvell is also from Texas, and he took Memphis to two 10-win seasons and a Cotton Bowl appearance in 2019. Florida State has been very public about its concerns of competing with the SEC and Big Ten in the near future, due to a revenue gap. Is that a reason for Norvell to consider leaving? He currently makes around $8 million annually. His buyout would be $6 million.
Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz came into this season on a bit of a hot seat, but the Tigers are 8-2 and just dominated Tennessee in a 36-7 win. The 40-year-old Drinkwitz is 37-22 as a coach and has shown he can win big when he’s got the talent. The Tigers have signed some of their highest-ranked recruiting classes in school history under Drinkwitz, and that talent has started to show this year, led by former five-star wide receiver Luther Burden III, who was part of the 2022 class.
UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor is as Texas as it gets. He’s a former legendary high school coach at Gilmer, and he’s 36-13 as the Roadrunners’ head coach, including a 25-3 mark in conference play. The 55-year-old Traylor won 12 and 11 games, respectively, in 2021 and 2022 at a school that had never won more than seven as an FBS program. It’s likely by the end of this season that Traylor will have led UTSA to its four best seasons ever. He also coached at Texas from 2015 to ’16 and Arkansas from 2018 to ’19, so he has worked at the highest level. He knows everyone in the state, and he knows how to handle the political strings. The question is whether Texas A&M feels it can hire a Group of 5 coach.
Kansas head coach Lance Leipold has won wherever he’s been. He claimed six Division III national championships in eight years at Wisconsin-Whitewater, won two MAC East division titles at Buffalo and quickly brought Kansas its most success in more than a decade. The 59-year-old Leipold took over a winless program, got it to a bowl game in Year 2 and led Kansas to a win over Oklahoma in late October. He has 15 wins in three seasons; Kansas won 16 games over the previous nine years combined. His buyout to leave Lawrence is $6 million. The question is whether Leipold can recruit at the highest level.
Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman has similarly won wherever he’s been, with a 109-36 record as a head coach, four FCS national titles in five years at North Dakota State and a Big 12 championship at Kansas State last year. His teams play very tough and creatively at K-State, and he is 3-1 against Oklahoma. Similarly, the question would be his ability to recruit at the highest level, as he’d never been a full-time FBS assistant until he got the K-State job.
Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck’s name has come up for several bigger jobs in recent years. He’s 49-31 at Minnesota after taking Western Michigan to a 13-1 season and a Cotton Bowl appearance in 2016. The 42-year-old Fleck took the Gophers to 11 wins in 2019, the program’s most since 1904 and its first top-10 finish since 1962, and they won nine games in both ’21 and ’22. But this year’s team has slipped to 5-5. The high-energy Fleck would be interesting in a job with unlimited resources.
Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch has taken Arizona from 1-11 to 7-3 in three seasons, and the program continues to trend upward. He has coached all over the country, from Michigan to UCLA to several stints in the NFL, and Arizona’s recruiting has improved dramatically since he took over, including landing wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, the highest-ranked recruit in school history. He also knows how to help quarterbacks, an area that has held Texas A&M back.
Would former Ohio State and Florida head coach Urban Meyer be interested? The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported last month that there was no truth in the rumors linking Meyer to Michigan State and that he wasn’t interested (nor was it clear the interest was real on the other side). But Meyer has won national championships when he’s had the most talent and resources. That’s something Texas A&M can provide. However, we’ve also seen the pressure of the big jobs wear down Meyer’s health. Meyer would also have to show he can work in the new era of college football. He didn’t have NIL and the portal at his previous jobs.
Someone who likely wouldn’t get the job but could get an interview is Houston Texans quarterbacks coach Jerrod Johnson. A former Texas A&M quarterback, Johnson has helped C.J. Stroud become one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL in his rookie season. Johnson began coaching in 2017 and has quickly moved up to lead a position group this year. He’s not far away for an interview, just down the road in Houston.
(Photo: Logan Riely / Getty Images)
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From the Athletic Article: - JeffB MU - 11/12 21:23:17