The intersections of history and present-day reality in college football are endlessly fascinating. Jimbo Fisher is merely the latest example… and in success or failure at Texas A&M, he will write a notable chapter in his career.
Aggie fans are hoping it will be a happy one, but for now, all they have is hope, as opposed to hard evidence.
Fisher could have landed at several programs after his bitter divorce from Florida State, and few would have carried the same resonance as A&M. This doesn’t mean A&M is a heavyweight program, but it DOES mean that the school is soaked in history, and in ways which make Fisher’s presence a potent reality. Will that potency grow? Only if Fisher does well. Yet, even now, that potency is considerable because of the linkages and interconnections of college football’s storied past.
Bobby Bowden was born in Alabama and led West Virginia to greatness in the early half of the 1970s, catapulting him to Florida State where he became an icon.
Nick Saban was born in West Virginia and led Alabama to greatness over the past 10 years, making him not only an icon, but very realistically the best coach college football has ever known.
Jimbo Fisher, born in West Virginia and a national champion at Florida State, has succeeded in Bowden’s footsteps. Now he must travel a road which goes right through Nick Saban, a road which will determine whether Fisher gets to be called an icon or not in the year 2030.
Bowden and Saban. Saban and Bowden. Jimbo Fisher worked as an offensive coordinator for both men. He won a national championship at Saban’s side with LSU in 2003. He won a national championship as Bowden’s successor at Florida State in the 2013 season and its glorious final act, the 2014 BCS National Championship Game at the Rose Bowl Stadium against Auburn, one of Saban’s foremost rivals. Fisher has worked for legends and succeeded them. He has risen to the top of his profession and also walked through the valleys Bowden and Saban both tasted in their coaching careers, Bowden near the end of his long reign at Florida State, Saban in the uncertain early years at Michigan State.
Fisher’s path to Texas A&M — which puts him squarely in the way of Alabama in the SEC West — also means he will have to defeat a mentor, Saban, in order to realize his highest aspirations. If you recall, Fisher versus Saban will not be the first time an understudy coaches against a mentor in a Texas A&M-Alabama game of great significance.
In the 1968 Cotton Bowl, Southwest Conference champion Texas A&M faced Alabama. This created a coaching matchup between A&M’s Gene Stallings and Bama’s already-legendary giant, Bear Bryant. Stallings was one of the Junction Boys, the members of Bryant’s first A&M team in 1954 who endured brutal and punishing practices and turned a desolate program into a heavyweight in a few short seasons. With the benefit of hindsight and the aid of evolved, sensible practices regarding player safety and hydration, the conditions in which the Junction Boys practiced would be regarded as player endangerment in 2018, but 64 years ago, that culture of deprivation was part of the romance of football, a sport which turned uncertain boys into indomitable men.
The mythology and greatness of the Bear had taken root earlier than his A&M days. He led Kentucky to the Sugar Bowl, for cryin’ out loud! However, the Junction Boys became an understandably emblematic representation of his ability to motivate players. That motivational genius — aspired to by so many peers, but very rarely matched or duplicated — made the Bear the best ever…
… until Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa under more cutthroat circumstances and created a machine whose consistency matches the Bear’s highest standards.
Stallings and A&M defeated the Bear in that 1968 Cotton Bowl. Exactly 25 years later, in the 1993 Sugar Bowl, Stallings won a national championship at Alabama, restoring the glory his mentor had brought to Tuscaloosa. Stallings helped the Bear produce an unbeaten team at Texas A&M in 1956. Then he forged his own unbeaten season at Alabama several decades later. Jimbo Fisher helped Nick Saban win a national title in the SEC. Now he will try to win big on his own in the SEC, carrying his Florida State success into a new situation. If he can pull it off, Fisher will add to his reputation. If he comes close, he will maintain his reputation. If he falls well short, his reputation will take a hit. Such is the nature of this move from Tallahassee to College Station: Fisher is betting very big on A&M, and the school is betting just as big on him, if not more, with a supremely lucrative deal which rightly generates massive expectations.
Simply stated, Fisher is not making gazillions of dollars to go 11-2 and win Citrus Bowls. He was hired to win SEC championships, make College Football Playoffs, and compete for national titles. At minimum, he needs to be a rich man’s version of Auburn, or a reasonable replication of 2007-2011 LSU under Les Miles. He needs to win the SEC West once every few years, occasionally win the SEC, and turn his most promising seasons into playoff berths. An 11-2 Citrus Bowl season can be an occasional result, but it can’t be the height of his achievements in College Station. All that oil money wasn’t meant to create the third-best program in the SEC behind Bama and Georgia.
This is high-stakes poker, a challenge worthy of Fisher’s career. What is so delicious about this new chapter in his — and A&M’s — existence is that it is such a decisive moment for the coach and the school alike.
If you wanted to call Fisher a superstar head coach — alongside Saban, Urban Meyer, Dabo Swinney, and Jim Harbaugh — you would have a reasonable case to make. (You would also have a reasonable case AGAINST the idea that Harbaugh is still a superstar, but that’s a different conversation for another time.) Fisher took over for Bobby Freakin’ Bowden, and we know that in the larger history of college football, it is hard to be the guy after “The Guy.” Ask Ron Zook at Florida (Steve Spurrier), or Fred Akers at Texas (Darrell Royal), or Ray Perkins at Alabama (The Bear), or Frank Solich at Nebraska (Tom Osborne). The list goes on and on. Fisher winning a national title at Florida State and reviving the superpower-level excellence of that program should not be underestimated as a great coaching feat.
However, the case against the notion that Fisher is a superstar coach is also reasonable. For one thing, Florida State’s dominance has not endured the way the more dynastic programs have persisted. Yes, much of this is not so much FSU’s decline as Clemson’s rise under Dabo, but the reality remains the same. Fisher was not able to reclaim the ACC from Clemson once he lost it. The bitter separation from Florida State only reinforces the idea that Jimbo has lost the magic touch, making this move to A&M feel like the beginning of a downturn. Recall Tommy Tuberville going from Auburn — where he was at the top of his game in 2004 — to Texas Tech. That move felt like a mistake and a mismatched pair, and that’s exactly what happened. Tuberville never regained his fastball.
There is ample historical precedent to support the notion that anxiety and a more nomadic dimension to a coaching career are related. There is additional reason to think that the confluence of anxiety and nomadic tendencies — removed from a coach’s sweet spot, the time and place when everything worked supremely well (as was the case for Fisher at Florida State in 2013 and 2014) — means regression and failure for a coach of Fisher’s stature. The odds are clearly stacked against him at A&M.
This tenure leaves very little “in between” territory for Fisher and A&M. Perhaps he will almost meet his goals in such a way that his reputation will be little different at the end compared to this beginning in 2018. Perhaps. The odds are, though, that Fisher will likely alter his reputation in a profound way. If he wins big, he will secure legendary status and take that into his retirement in the distant future. If he fails big, he will be remembered as a good coach (“very good” if people are generous) who had a decent but relatively brief run and did not sustain greatness in a way which will make him a college football immortal.
Jimbo Fisher will make gobs and gobs of money, so on that front, he and his family will be taken care of for the rest of their lives. In terms of legacy and reputation and identity — the things which people remember decades after coaching careers end — Fisher is encountering the withering pressure which can only come from a crucible such as this. It is the pressure which goes with the payday.
A&M boosters and power brokers are nervously waiting to see if their big money push will pay off. The Fisher King must make the biggest catch of his life, or he won’t be remembered with universal fondness in the larger run of college football history.
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