Pursuit of happiness
TEXAS A&M: Aggies see Fisher as final piece for run at championships
COLLEGE STATION — Jimbo Fisher, reared in West Virginia, is a fan of the great outdoors, and on Monday the new Texas A&M coach reeled off a handful of the wilder things he enjoys when he’s not on the football field. Riding horses, for one.
Informed Bryan-College Station’s countryside not far from Kyle Field offers ample opportunity for the outdoorsman, Fisher smiled and said, “I’m home.”
Aggies are hoping so, and they’re also hoping he calls Texas A&M home for the next 10 years, because that will mean he’s likely lived up to his elongated contract paying $7.5 million annually. Fisher’s straightforward task on the oft-wild ride that is coaching in
the SEC?
“We want to always be competing for SEC championships, and we want to be in the hunt for national championships,” A&M president Michael K. Young said.
It’s why Fisher was lured from Florida State, where he said he was happy. He just couldn’t pass up the chance for a different challenge at A&M.
“If you quit taking challenges, you need to get out of the business,” Fisher said during his introductory news conference at Kyle Field on Monday. “When good enough becomes good enough, you’ve got problems.”
Good enough no longer cut it at A&M, which fired sixth-year coach Kevin Sumlin in late November following a fourth straight season of failing to reach at least nine victories. Fisher won at least 10 games in six of his eight seasons at FSU, including an undefeated national championship season (14-0) in 2013, when quarterback Jameis Winston won the Heisman Trophy.
Beyond self-sufficient
The Aggies will pay Sumlin $10.4 million to not coach A&M over the final two years of his contract. That’s why Young offered a friendly reminder on Monday, when all the bloated numbers were being bandied about, that the A&M athletic department more than pays for itself.
“We’re one of only a handful of schools in the entire United States where the athletic program is actually more than self-sufficient,” Young said. “And our athletics program contributes back to the academic side.”
Young said that contribution last year was about $5 million. In 2015-16, A&M made about $194 million and spent $137 million as the nation’s top-grossing athletics department, according to an annual USA Today study.
So while A&M has plenty of money, the Aggies have sagged in that other relevant domain: competing for football championships. The Aggies will go at least 20 years without a conference title, considering their last came in 1998 when they played in the Big 12. They won their lone national title in 1939 — nearly 80 years in the past.
“We have a half-billion dollars invested in this facility here,” A&M athletic director Scott Woodward said while glancing up at the architectural goliath that is Kyle Field. “We have the best nutrition center, the best training room … we have the best of everything here. We thought the final piece was to get a championship coach.”
Fisher, who at 52 is a year younger than Sumlin, is one of four active college football coaches with at least one national title. The others are Alabama’s Nick Saban, Ohio State’s Urban Meyer and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney.
Fisher will get quite an introduction at A&M, considering two of the Aggies’ first four games next season are against Clemson and Alabama, the past two national champions who are again in the College Football Playoff. A&M plays host to Clemson in a nonconference game on Sept. 8 and plays at Alabama on Sept. 22 in the Aggies’ SEC opener.
FSU played Alabama to open this season (a 24-7 Crimson Tide victory) in a non-conference game, and the Seminoles and Clemson are annual opponents in ACC action.
“We know each other quite well,” Fisher said of the ACC rivals. “We’ve had success, and they’ve had success.”
Knows Saban well
Fisher served as Alabama coach Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator when both were at LSU in the early 2000s, and the Tigers won a national title in 2003 under their direction.
“He was on defense, and I was on offense,” Fisher said. “We went at it every day (in practice). Now you have to do it once a year. We had our battles. They were fun. Competition makes you better.”
Woodward recalled Fisher’s inviting him into offensive coordinator meetings when both were at LSU in the early 2000s, and the future A&M athletic director said he was in awe of Fisher’s preaching of physicality.
“SEC football is physical week in and week out, and Jimbo understands that,” Woodward said. “You have to be physical every down in this league. That’s his philosophy. It’s what he believes in.”
Fisher said he’ll simply be an “observer” of the Belk Bowl on Dec. 29 in Charlotte, N.C., where A&M (7-5) and Wake Forest (7-5) will play for the first time. Interim coach Jeff Banks will lead the Aggies in the postseason, and Fisher will focus on recruiting and filling out his own staff in the meantime.