A&M coach Jimbo Fisher excels at motivating players, fans.
Coach wants helmet to mean as much as ring to his players
When he was at Florida State, Jimbo Fisher heard stories about Texas A&M from his right-hand man Mark Robinson, who had worked in the A&M football program in the mid-2000s, and from Aggies athletic director Scott Woodward.
Fisher and Woodward worked together at LSU about 15 years ago, and Woodward first called Fisher at FSU to try to lure him to College Station last fall. But the background from Robinson, now A&M’s associate AD for football, and Woodward’s sales pitch didn’t prepare Fisher for A&M itself, he told a gathering of Aggies this week in Houston.
“This may be the only place where the book of traditions is thicker than my playbook,” Fisher said to chuckles from the crowd.
Playing to the crowd
Fisher, hired in December to replace the fired Kevin Sumlin, said one tradition in particular has stood out to him: the awarding of the Aggie ring. It’s a ritual he used as a motivational tool to his team.
“Amazing what it stands for,” Fisher said of the A&M tradition dating to 1889, nearly as old as the university itself.
Fisher earlier this month handed out Aggie rings to his players who had achieved at least 90 hours of classes toward their degree, and at the same time he took in the ceremony enveloping him — a bit wideeyed.
“Their families were there, our team was there, and our team was so excited for those guys, because they knew what it meant, what they had achieved,” Fisher said. “They knew what putting that ring on means. Their families were crying and everybody was happy.”
A perpetual motivator, later that afternoon Fisher set a maroon A&M helmet in front of his team.
“What does this helmet mean?” Fisher said he told his players. “Does it stand for anything? Does it put fear in your opponents? Does it stand for a team that’s unbelievably physical, team-oriented, tough, have discipline, grit, can execute, play under pressure, play in big moments, play in the rain, play in the snow, play on the road? “What does it stand for?” Fisher then told the Touchdown Club of Houston crowd, “They couldn’t tell me. I said, ‘When our helmet means the same thing as that ring, we have a chance to be good. That helmet represents everybody who wears a ring.’ ”
Fisher is folksy, full of football anecdotes and knows his crowd as well as he knows his playbook, and he had no trouble firing up the 350 or so Aggies on hand in the JW Marriott in the Galleria.
“Texas A&M has the most untapped potential of any university in the country,” he said.
A&M, weary of mediocrity in football, tapped into its deep pockets to draw Fisher away from Florida State to the tune of a guaranteed $75 million over 10 years. When asked in December if he was concerned about handing out such a large
Tapping into the potential
Enter Fisher, 52, who won a national title in his fourth of eight seasons at FSU. He won at least 10 games in six of those seasons. A&M has won at least 10 games once this century — hence Fisher’s claim about untapped potential in his new home.
“People genuinely live the culture of the university,” Fisher said, reiterating what he considers A&M’s emphasis on values. “They take pride in traditions and history and everything that goes on, and I’ve never been anywhere where people truly take so much pride in their school, in the environment and in the atmosphere they want to create.”
As far as those (future) championships, ones validating much of Fisher’s fresh message to the maroon masses …
“We can win championships,” he said. “If I didn’t feel that way, I wouldn’t be here.”