Veteran coaches taking teams to new heights
Saturday’s Orange Bowl matchup between Texas A&M and North Carolina featured two of college football’s top coaches in Jimbo Fisher and Mack Brown.
Jimbo Fisher and Mack Brown know what it takes to win a national championship. The two are members of a small fraternity of active college football head coaches who have done so (along with Dabo Swinney, Nick Saban and Ed Orgeron). Fisher did it at Florida State in 2013, the final year of the BCS era before the fourteam playoff format began. Brown won it all at Texas in 2005 and made it back to the title game in the 2009 season only to lose to Alabama.
They weren’t playing for a national championship on
Saturday when Fisher’s fifth-ranked Texas A&M Aggies and Brown’s 13th-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels faced off on in the 87th Orange Bowl.
But the fact that they were in this position — a New Year’s Six bowl, among the upper echelon of teams at least for this season — is worth noting.
Fisher, at his introductory press conference in December 2017, said he planned to “take Texas A&M to somewhere they haven’t been.” Three years into his 10year, $75 million contract, Fisher guided the Aggies to an 8-1 record and a No. 5 ranking in the country, just on the outside looking in of the College Football Playoff.
Brown, with three decades of head coaching experience including his 16 years at Texas (1998-2013) and 10 in a previous stint at North Carolina (19881997), returned to coaching in 2019 after a five-year hiatus. He is 15-9 so far in his second stint with UNC after inheriting a team that had won just 11 total games in the three years before his return and this year has led the Tar Heels to their first ever Orange Bowl appearance.
Their programs aren’t where either coach wants them to be yet. But Saturday marked a stepping
stone in the process.
‘CHANGING THE CULTURE’
Let’s start with Fisher, who has the Aggies on a similar trajectory to the one he had when he took over for the legendary Bobby Bowden at Florida State.
It took Fisher three years to get the Seminoles to the Orange Bowl. They won the national championship a year later, the final team to win it all in the BCS format. One year after that, in 2014, FSU was part of the first-ever College Football Playoff.
Fast forward to 2020, his third season at Texas A&M, and Fisher has the Aggies in the Orange Bowl for just the second time in the school’s history (the first was back in 1943).
Fisher’s sophomore class — his first true recruiting class with the Aggies — is filled with playmakers including running back Isaiah Spiller, athlete Ainais Smith and tight end Jalen Wydermyer on offense, as well as defensive back Demani Richardson and defensive lineman DeMarvin Leal on defense.
“Hopefully,” Fisher said, “we can keep heading in the same progression in which we had at Florida State and things we did, and we were able to have great success there.”
His impact at Texas
A&M has been felt since the first time he talked to the team. As senior linebacker Buddy Johnson recalls, players were in the locker room, laughing, joking around.
Fisher’s response?
“He came in, he snatched his glasses off just like that, and he was like, ‘What are you laughing at? There’s nothing funny. It’s straight business.’ ” Johnson said. “Ever since then you can tell the change, the sense of urgency around the building and everything else that comes with it. Man, he talked about coming in and changing the culture, and I think he’s did just that.”
They’ve found the balance between having fun and being serious. The results are showing.
After sitting in the middle of the pack in the SEC West during Fisher’s first two seasons — going 9-4 in 2018 and 8-5 in 2019 — Texas A&M started to make its statement in
2020. Yes, the Aggies lost to Alabama. Everyone did. But they beat a Florida Gators team that was ranked No. 4 at the time and rode a seven-game win streak into the Orange Bowl.
“It’s only the beginning,” Johnson said. “There’s a phrase I’m sure y’all know that says, ‘It’s always calm before the storm.’ It’s calm right now, but the storm is most definitely coming, and guys should be worried for sure.”
Fisher is at the helm of that rise.
His passion is always on display whenever he patrols the sidelines. His jubilation is a common sight, as well, whenever he’s at Hard
Rock Stadium. Fisher entered Saturday with a perfect 6-0 record when playing in South Florida, including his two Orange Bowl wins while at FSU in 2012 and 2016.
“When you walk in that stadium,” Fisher said, “you’re going to play a great opponent whether it’s regular season or whether it’s in an Orange Bowl, that’s for sure. ... It’s just great to be back down here. It really is.”
PUTTING TAR HEELS ON THE MAP
And then there’s Brown, who has needed just two years to turn a two-win Tar Heels team into a team receiving an Orange Bowl invitation.
It’s UNC’s first major bowl game since playing in the Cotton Bowl following the 1949 season. That was four years before the creation of the Atlantic Coast Conference. It was also two years before Brown was born.
“That got their attention,” said Brown, who entered Saturday with a career 259-131-1 record as a head coach. “They can’t put history in perspective very often, but they said, ‘Oh, my God, that is a long time.’ So they get that. And that was kind of fun for them.”
Winning games has been fun, too. North Carolina has only had 15 nine-win seasons over the course of its first 116 seasons. Brown was the head coach for four of those seasons during his first stint in Chapel Hill.
The 2020 Tar Heels team came into the Orange Bowl with a chance to add its name to that group even if they knew it would be a tall task.
North Carolina entered Saturday as a 7 1⁄2- point underdog to Texas A&M, and the offense’s top three playmakers — running backs Michael Carter and Javonte Williams as well as wide receiver Dyami Brown — sat out the game.
But this UNC team, its upperclassmen specifically, has shown grit during this turnaround season. The Tar Heels’ senior class went a combined 5-18 in their first two seasons before Brown arrived. North Carolina went 7-6 last year, capped by a win in the Military Bowl, their first bowl win since 2014 and fourth since 2001.
This year, they have gone 8-3, posting two wins against opponents who were ranked at the time of the matchup (North Carolina State and Miami) and playing Notre Dame close until falling apart in the second half.
“A lot of people have doubted us in the past,” UNC senior offensive lineman Jordan Tucker said. “We’ve been the underdog going in and out, so there’s nothing really new to me. Might have to instill it in the younger guys but to a lot of the older guys, it’s nothing new.”
Brown added: “They understand the magnitude of the game. They know how good A&M is. They’re very aware of the four guys we don’t have playing. They know that not one person in America is going to pick us to win outside of our room, so we have very direct transparent conversations all the time. So they’re fully aware of the fun challenge that’s ahead of us.”