Josh Pate On Jimbo Fisher Being Fired By Texas A&M (Late Kick Cut)

Texas A&M fired Jimbo Fisher today it's absolutely how to handle this kind of decision it's a bombshell announcement I don't think anyone woke up this morning this side of Billy Luchi expecting to be reading that headline or releasing that headline but the headline is out now and it's real and it is um it is about as far reaching a headline in terms of impact as you can get in college football I said college football for a reason not just Texas A&M the particulars here I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this cuz everyone's talking about the numbers in the buyout $ 77.5 million buyout he gets every dime of it he's 45 and 25 in his six seasons there uh they signed a 10year $75 million deal in 2017 they doubled down in 2021 and it was now 95 million through 2031 fully guaranteed just an asinine contract but it was what it was he has owed $19.3 million over the next 60 days the rest will come via annual payments of $7.2 million through 2031 again we all get how crazy that is we all understand that there are people out there who cannot rub two dead flies together and they're sitting here watching a guy being paid 70 some odd million dollars not to coach football have fun with that yes it's a headline but it's kind of low hanging fruit at this point uh I want to talk about how this happened I want to talk about how jarring this was to get alerted to this morning and also I want to tell you I didn't necessarily think they were going to make this move this year probably felt a little bit more leaning towards that over the past couple of weeks uh but talked to some people as close to the situation outside of Jimbo as you could get and you know what the more I listen to him the more I think Texas A&M handled this decision as effectively as you could once you've made the decision here's what you can't have what you can't have is you can't have this be in limbo and you can't have new reports every 12 hours I cannot stand in the modern day of hot seat and hirings and Fire ings you have to refresh Twitter or X or whatever you want to call that nowadays because some national reporter has a new source and a new headline every hour about the latest on fill in the blanks job status dude if you're going to make the move make the move what you don't do is what programs like LSU did a few years ago and you let it leak out that the guy's probably going to get fired but we're going to let him Coach the rest of the season well all of a sudden he pulls off a miraculous upset gets carried off the on his player shoulders and overwhelmingly perception shifts and you keep a guy who should very well have been a dead man walking and he coaches like one the next year and he's fired you don't get yourself in that situation you make the decision uh which was not made obviously yesterday because they hung half a hundred on Mississippi State you make the decision let the following game play out if you must and boom you dro the axe and that's exactly what they did you cannot keep reading the same book and expect a different ending and that's kind of what it felt like watching Jimbo Fisher Le teams I'm the first to tell you so many close losses oh man if they just didn't have this injury here or this injury there if they just tweaked this or that if they just benefited from this turnover margin or that bounce a ball and that's all well and good if it's the story of a season that's the story of Jimbo fiser at Texas A&M though and so what was going to happen you know I was having a conversation with someone today and we were talking this through and you kind of AR at the same conclusion what was going to happen if if you made the argument for him to get one more a year what was going to happen in other words what Ace was he going to pull out of his back pocket what what rabbit was he going to pull out of the Hat what move was he going to make that he hadn't already made I mean if he knows to do something he should have already done it it's not year two it was year six he's over half a decade into the tenure there and a lot of the things that were plaguing them up until the last minute were the same things that have plagued them his entire time there there and so Jimbo's out uh he's going to get paid handsomely and it'll largely be not a forgettable era but it'll be an era that probably you look back on and you say what could have been but you don't have to say it with a long face if you're an A&M fan cuz now you get another shot to find out and this is really where my mind was cuz quickly after this headline was released and Billy Luchi and the guys over at texags were on top of it after that headline was released the iOS starts going off and thankfully Delta's inflight Wi-Fi was working today because I had lengthy conversations at 35,000 ft via text with um shall we say some people who are going to figure into this coaching search to varying degrees of prominence I don't really think most of the country realizes how toold significant this is this is a bombshell about as big as it gets in college football and I'm going to tell you why number one it's obvious the A&M job is open but the mistake that the more casual minded fan makes is they think that affects Texas A&M Texas A&M is a Keystone Job meaning that everything works Downstream of what they do there are about half a dozen of them in college football with enough money to Warrant that distinction Alabama's won Ohio State's won A&M is one they don't have the trophy case that those other places have but they have the checkbook to have a ripple effect that goes across the entire Pond of college football so what I mean by a keystone program is no different than when I say it in nature about an animal a keystone species when they do something it infects the entire ecosystem when A&M does what they're about to do in this hiring cycle it will affect in some shape form or fashion everybody in college football and the way that happens is they hire a head coach and you're looking over here as like an Arkansas State fan and unbeknownst to you you're defensive coordinator is about to get hired for a position job and then all of a sudden you in Jonesboro Arkansas have been affected by jumbo Fisher being fired and you never saw it coming by the way I just picked that University in that position out of thin air I don't know anything on that front at least but number two do you understand what this is about to mean when the transfer portal opens because this is all coaches wanted to talk about today aside from the ones that may be candidates for this job every other coach is licking their chop because you rarely get a situation where a roster this loaded is without a head coach entering transfer portal season everybody knows it's coming frankly even if Jimbo was retained a lot of the players on this roster a lot of the players that were part of that number one class of all time a couple of years ago were going in the portal some big names are going to go in the portal from Texas A&M they knew it I think Outsiders know it everybody's been waiting and biting their time in anticipation for it and now that Jimbo fish is out the door you can bet your bottom dollar that several Big Time names from College Station are going to be um playing elsewhere next season and that's just the way it is Bruce Hornsby style that right there is another impact piece of this that will have Ripple effects that are felt throughout the entire sport I want you to think about watching Florida State yesterday against Miami you know Michigan State goes into a tail spin Keon Coleman decides he doesn't want to be there anymore he transfers to Florida State just that one move could very well have changed the trajectory of the ACC Championship picture this year it may be one of the core pieces of what gets Florida State into the playoff and that's that's the impact that one star player can have when he goes in the portal and goes elsewhere to play I'm not I'm not telling you there are a bunch of Keon Coleman on A&M's roster I'm telling you there are Game Changer differen makers both sides the ball on A&M's roster that are about to go in the portal and some teams on the brink of playoff contention some teams that are Bonafide playoff contenders are going to watch that happen and they're all going to come running so that's that's twofold why this is a big deal and then I want to also just briefly talk about this coaching search that's about to happen in specific terms for Texas A&M I did not expect to get the push back I've gotten on this CA frankly uh I've said that already too many times tonight honestly what I'm about to play for you is common sense I mean talking to power players in the industry folks who are involved in the the mechanisms of coaching searches including coaches themselves none of them like I've got a 100% agreement on this from them and it's about the caliber of the job the not the program the job being the head coach at Texas M and what that makes you capable of so I want to take you back about a month ago when we started feeling like this job could come open and I wanted to go ahead and as we would say in the meteorological World moisten the column a little bit no immunity because it's a weather term I wanted to go ahead and have this out there so that when Jimbo did get fired if he did I could just snap my fingers and Colin could play this if the Texas A&M job were to come open you would quickly realize the coaching industry views the am M job way different than fans do fans look at the A&M job as a second or third tier job you are outside your mind everything you need to win national championships is there also I'm not talking potential it's literally there it is a turnkey Contender for the right staff the right staff comes in there and wins overnight with the pieces that have already been assembled and the infrastructure that's already been built there is no external Factor keeping A&M from being a premium PR program everything that's keeping A&M from being a premier program is internal all due respect to Missouri there are external factors working against Missouri there is no external Factor working against Texas A&M I viewed that as common sense that was my mistake apparently it's not common sense it is like arguing with brick walls I love you guys I love you to death smart people can have casual takes all the time and to put it bluntly some of you have very casual takes on this could you show me the tweets these are just three out of a grab bag that is in the hundreds now of tweets that people sent in response to that I'm going to read them to you uh tweet number one seriously other than a year or two in the last 50 years when has it ever been a top tier job money is not the issue access to prospects or building facilities it's just a wantan toe program with tons of cash but what what do you think the currency is in this sport what do you think it takes to to build all the other anyway I digress tweet number two yeah only because of the money they can spend not because of program history and success I think a lot of you listening or watching right now already understand how misguided this is but for those of you who don't I will calmly walk you through it in the next minute I had another reply in the last 28 years they've had 10 wins as a program only two times seriously think about that sure they can Flash some money around but some things money can't buy the inability for a sizable chunk of the college football public to distinguish trophy case from caliber of job is fascinating to me because I didn't know this existed I thought most people understood that the reason Texas A&M has underachieved is not because they lack the critical factors that it takes to be an elite program they've made horrific decisions in hiring this happens sometimes by the way like for example I'm from the state of Georgia folks sat there banged on Georgia for a decade and another decade and another decade and then all of a sudden they hired some dude named Kirby Smart and it didn't matter to Kirby Smart that Georgia hadn't won a title since the Advent of MTV didn't hold him back a bit you know why ca he's an elite coach Kirby Smart if he was at Texas A&M would do exactly what he's doing in Georgia Nick sain if he took the A&M job in ' 07 instead of Bama would do exactly what he's doing in Alabama Elite coaches are going to win anywhere they have Elite resources they have the critical traits in the boxes checked they have that at A&M the difference is they have not harnessed that in an effort to hire the right candidate they've hired Kevin sumlin they've hired Jimbo fiser good coaches but not great coaches so they've gotten good results they haven't gotten great results and yet I'm sitting here asking anyone who disagrees with me what do they lack tell me what they have at Alabama that makes it a great job not a great program tell me what they have at Georgia tell me what they have at Ohio State and everything you list if you know what you're talking about they've got in some cases in more abundant Supply at Texas A&M than they have at these other places and yet it always falls back to to the nuggle dragging mouth breathing how many trophies have they want it's like looking at Roger Bannister you fool you can't run a sub four-minute mile you know why no one's ever done it before like imagine an elite head coach I I I just I'll just List names because you guys are throwing them out there imagine someone like Dan Landing you know what forget Landing let's just say Kirby Smart got tired at Georgia and A&M went and got Kirby Smart you watch Kirby Smart purely hypothetical of course you watch Kirby Smart walk up the steps take the stage stand behind the podium Are you seriously looking and saying well that's it for him everyone knows Elite coaches can't win at A&M because it's not a top tier job how stupid would that be they haven't hired the right guy that's the long and short of it [Music]