Jump to content

TexasRenegade

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    1282
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by TexasRenegade

  1. 9 minutes ago, Rickylovesweed said:

    I believe the OC Charlie wanted was Chad Morris. 

    So his OC hires he wanted were Chad Morris, ended up being Shawn Watson, then it was Sterlin Gilbert. Needless to say, the dude just sucked at picking an offensive coordinator. 

    Chad Morris was fucking awful as an OC at Arkansas and then Auburn for a year once he was fired as a HC. 

    Yeah but at the time Morris was the highest paid OC in the country and everyone was trying to hire him away from Clemson.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. 6 minutes ago, Burt Macklin said:

    Texas could’ve given Charlie Strong or Tom Herman $20 million assistant pools and they still would’ve hired god awful coaching staffs. It’s not about the budget. Those guys just have no fucking clue how to run an organization.

    Elko is cementing himself firmly in their tier with these coaching hires and when you combine that with his talk about not being able to handle calling the defense and being a HC, it looks like Texas fans could be in store for a very fun next few years watching this unfold. 

    In Chuckle's defense he did try to hire a good OC, and Patterson told him his check wasn't that big.

    • Haha 1
    • Rage+1 1
  3. 11 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

    You’re not understanding that the school wouldn’t be providing the benefits to the student athletes it would be their league/conference/team that would in all this. The team/league would just be loosely affiliated with the university. 

    serious joe pesci GIFShocked Danny Devito GIFHappy Cracking Up GIF by ZDF heute-show

     

    Ok..... 1st The University of Texas has to publicly be agreeing to what will be seen as a scam to get out of spending equal money on Women's sports, by joining a "loose affiliation" of schools that just happen to play the 2 highest revenue sports.

    2nd the Feds have to somehow believe this absurdity that it isn't the school's money being paid to the athletes/scholarships and isn't really a scam to get around federal legislation for gender equity....

     

    Vine Ok GIF

     

  4. 1 minute ago, BurntOrange&White said:

    The push has already started. Don’t even realignment bro. 

    It will never happen.  The feds aren't suddenly going to go ok these 85 or more scholarships don't count towards gender equity so don't worry about it.

    I'll go ahead say it for him, @closetojumping will fist @futureman while racing @SydneyCarton in a naked 40 down the drag if they ever exempt football from Title IX.

    • Haha 2
    • Prepare your anus 1
  5. Just now, BurntOrange&White said:

     

     

    You all thinking the athletic program as a whole is breaking away from ncaa. It’s football/basketball that would break away. 

    The university still receives federal dollars and would still be subject to Title IX?  Football and basketball aren't suddenly exempt because they aren't in the NCAA?

     

     

    51 minutes ago, utfan87 said:

    There has been a big push to remove football from the title ix because of the imbalance it provides to women’s sports and it’s unfair to men’s sports. 

    Also the idea that they will ever exempt football from title IX is hillarious.  It would basically kill funding for most women's sports.

  6. 24 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    Besides Murphy and Sweat, maybe Trill. Collins has the talent but he has always been very inconsistent. But he is better than Broughton who has bird legs and doesn't take the game seriously enough to succeed in the NFL.

    People said the same about Coburn before his last year.  Some were even somewhat critical of Sweat last year.  I think Collins is capable of making that same leap forward.....now he just needs to do it.

    • Hook 'Em 5
  7. With how Billy acted surprised that they hired Elko instead of making Robinson the head coach, at least he claims he was hearing Robinson was it before they announced Elko, I wonder if Robinson thought it was his job and then feels like the rug got perked out from under we him.  There was definitely a concerted effort to make Robinson look good as interim.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  8. 2 minutes ago, horn_of_the_morning said:

    Agree. The leak by Looch and other propagandists at pretty much the same time about the unculminated hire was a last ditch attempt to scuttle the deal. Kinda like what they tried to do with the "Texas to SEC" break.

    Who is trying to break it though?

     

    Looch is basically the athletic depts talking dummy.  So for this logic, either the regents/sharp are hiring him and Bjork is trying to sabotage it....or he's Bjorks guy and the Athletic dept I'd leaking it in full revolt....

     

    Neither seem particularly likely.

  9. 49 minutes ago, TexasRenegade said:

    1 of 2 things is happening.  Either Bjork is even more inept then I have been told, which I've been told is pretty damn inept, or there are multiple factions fighting over who the next coach will be.

     

    It serves no purpose, other than disappointing and splitting your fan base to have this many coaches supposedly linked to the job.

     

    1. When you do hire your guy, it give the perception that other guys said no.

    2. It divides your fan base in too many directions over who the coach should be.....

    And it's not like these names are coming from random media guys obviously being linked by agents trying to get raises, if Bjork isn't saying the names himself, Lucci is and that's practically the same thing.

  10. 1 of 2 things is happening.  Either Bjork is even more inept then I have been told, which I've been told is pretty damn inept, or there are multiple factions fighting over who the next coach will be.

     

    It serves no purpose, other than disappointing and splitting your fan base to have this many coaches supposedly linked to the job.

     

    1. When you do hire your guy, it give the perception that other guys said no.

    2. It divides your fan base in too many directions over who the coach should be.....

    • Hook 'Em 4
    • Like 1
  11. 4 hours ago, Teryor said:

    The Athletic: Jimbo Fisher’s failures left Texas A&M well short of national championship dreams

    Featuring this awesome quote, which I'm not sure if 247 should take as them having the best rankings or being poor talent evaluators

      Reveal hidden contents

    When Texas A&M hired Fisher in December 2017, it was widely considered a coup. Two months later, Texas A&M System chancellor John Sharp handed him a plaque proclaiming a future national title with the date unfilled. At FSU, Fisher went 83-23, led the Seminoles to a BCS national championship and a College Football Playoff appearance.

    The fast-talking West Virginia native admired A&M’s top-notch resources. The Aggies had a top-10 athletic budget, spent half a billion dollars on facility renovations, had given their previous coach a massive contract, had unparalleled fan support and resided in a recruiting hotbed. He trusted then-A&M athletic director Scott Woodward, whom he’d known since his LSU days. The program checked a lot of boxes, except championships: The Aggies won their last conference title in 1998 and their last national championship in 1939.

    Fisher, who knew how to win, was the missing piece, or so the Aggies thought. After giving Fisher a 10-year, $75 million contract, Sharp told the Houston Chronicle that his only concern with the length of the contract was that he couldn’t get Fisher to agree to a 15-year deal.

    Looking back, Fisher’s best days were behind him.

    “Jimbo lost his fastball,” a former Texas A&M staffer said. “He was hungry and motivated at FSU. Then he started reading his press clippings.”

    The downfall wasn’t immediate. In Fisher’s first year, the Aggies went 9-4 and beat LSU for the first time since joining the SEC. He ensured every staff member received a game ball to commemorate the historic seven-overtime victory.

    In year three, A&M had its best season of the Fisher era. The Aggies went 9-1 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, winning the Orange Bowl and finishing fourth in the Associated Press poll, their highest postseason ranking in 81 years. He elevated recruiting and stockpiled the roster with elite talent. In a postgame victory speech at the Orange Bowl, Fisher proclaimed, “We ain’t done yet.”

    In September 2021, Fisher signed a contract extension for 10 years and nearly $95 million guaranteed. A month later, Fisher scored the landmark victory of his tenure, a 41-38 upset of No. 1 Alabama. That winter, A&M signed the highest-rated recruiting class of the modern era. On signing day, Fisher — while denying accusations that A&M bought the class — vowed, “If you don’t like that we’re coming on, get used to it. I ain’t going nowhere.”

    go-deeper
    GO DEEPER

    Jimbo Fisher triggered by accusations of NIL slush fund: Calls rumors ‘garbage’ and ‘irresponsible as hell’

    But as the program peaked, cracks in the foundation began to show. None were more visible than A&M’s decline on offense, which was supposed to be Fisher’s specialty.

    The Aggies lost quarterbacks to season-ending injuries three years in a row. Offensive line play deteriorated. Fisher, who was the primary play caller and handled the offensive game plan, evolved slowly.

    “Jimbo’s scheme was antiquated in 2014 when he won a national championship at Florida State,” an opposing SEC staffer said. “It was kind of out-of-date then, and it’s just not gotten better in 10 years.”

    The Aggies failed to score 30 points against FBS opponents in 13 consecutive games from November 2021 to November 2022. Calls from fans and critics for Fisher to ditch play calling and hire a true offensive coordinator grew louder as the Aggies stumbled to a losing record. Despite his defiant tone after the win over LSU, Fisher relented after the season, hiring former Arkansas and Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino.

    In August, Petrino called the offensive installation “a collective effort” but said he would handle play-calling duties. Bjork confirmed Petrino did call the plays this season, but three athletic department sources said Petrino didn’t have full offensive control and that he called plays primarily from Fisher’s offensive scheme.

    So why hire Petrino or a coordinator at all?

    “He felt like he had to, just for perception,” the athletic department staffer said. “His ego would never allow him to (relinquish offensive control). He wants to prove to everybody, ‘See, my scheme works.’”

    Said Bjork to The Athletic, “My job was to say, ‘Coach, we’ve talked about an OC. Now’s the time. You’ve said it. We all agree. We’re going to turn it loose.’ And however it worked after that, that was up to them.”

    Five people in or close to the program described Fisher as stubborn. If something worked at FSU in 2013, Fisher’s belief was that it would work at Texas A&M. Suggestions to do things differently weren’t often well-received.

    “He liked confirmation,” a former A&M assistant said. “Sometimes the coaches would just say whatever they thought he wanted to hear because they’d be burned out in meetings. … You knew he was gonna do whatever he wanted to do anyways.”

    Said the former A&M staffer, “If you told him ‘no,’ or something he didn’t want to hear, he would talk s— about you, like a little kid or something.”

    Fisher’s contract armed him with immense power. The athletic department staffer said Fisher made it known he could get others fired: “He would say, ‘I’ve got the stick, and I’ll use it.’”

    The offense received the bulk of Fisher’s attention. A lot of a team’s shortcomings can be papered over by a great quarterback, and Fisher understood that. Jameis Winston, Christian Ponder, EJ Manuel and JaMarcus Russell became first-round picks under his direction at Florida State and LSU. Fisher, who played quarterback at Samford, was also hardest on his quarterbacks.

    “He’d dog-cuss QBs,” a former personnel staffer said. “I’ve never seen a dude tear up a young quarterback like Jimbo did.”

    Despite his early success with FSU QBs, he later struggled to develop his quarterback recruits into stars. Since Winston, not a single Fisher high school quarterback recruit has finished his career as the starter at the school to which Fisher recruited him. At Texas A&M, the only quarterback that started and finished consecutive seasons under Fisher is one he didn’t recruit: Kellen Mond.

    Jimbo Fisher’s high school QB signees since Jameis Winston

    John Franklin III
    2013, FSU
    Transferred after 2 seasons
    JJ Cosentino
    2014, FSU
    30 career attempts, no starts in 4 years
    Deondre Francois
    2015, FSU
    Transferred after 4 seasons
    De’Andre Johnson
    2016, FSU
    Dismissed
    Malik Henry
    2016, FSU
    Transferred in first season
    Bailey Hockman
    2017, FSU
    Transferred after 1 season
    James Blackman
    2017, FSU
    Transferred after 4 seasons
    James Foster
    2018, Texas A&M
    Transferred after 3 seasons
    Zach Calzada
    2019, Texas A&M
    Transferred after 3 seasons
    Haynes King
    2020, Texas A&M
    Transferred after 3 seasons
    Eli Stowers
    2021, Texas A&M
    Transferred after 2 seasons
    Conner Weigman
    2022, Texas A&M
    Sophomore at Texas A&M
    Marcel Reed
    2023, Texas A&M
    Freshman at Texas A&M
    A former A&M recruiting staffer pointed to mechanics and how Fisher instructs quarterbacks to hold the ball as a hindrance, citing the case of Haynes King, a former four-star recruit who transferred to Georgia Tech last winter and has been more successful there than he was at A&M. King’s personal quarterback trainer told 247Sports in October that King’s throwing motion had become elongated.

    “If you watch film, you’ll see Haynes King is holding the ball really, really high at a certain location,” the former recruiting staffer said. “Now you see Haynes King playing free and open. … (Fisher) tries to mold them in a certain way … it may have worked in the ’90s when he was at Samford, but these kids these days? They want to play more like Patrick Mahomes. They want to play free.”

    The development issues weren’t exclusive to quarterback. The offensive line, despite having two freshman All-Americans in 2021, has regressed, ranking last in the SEC in pressure rate allowed in three consecutive seasons, according to TruMedia. Fisher hasn’t had a 1,000-yard receiver since 2014, and none of his wide receiver recruits at A&M have turned into NFL Draft picks.

    “We played them last year, and we were like, ‘Holy s—.’ There was first-round talent across the defensive line, the entire two-deep,” the SEC staffer said. “And then you play them this year and it’s like, ‘They’re still really good, but it felt like we played the exact same team last year.’ Are these guys really developing?”

    The recruiting department is symbolic of how Fisher handled things. During his first fall at A&M, he walked into the bullpen where recruiting staffers worked and told them recruiting would take care of itself. “If you win games, you will land good recruits,” Fisher said, according to the former personnel staffer. “If you lose games, you will not land good recruits.”

    That simplistic view isn’t entirely off base, but as roster management evolved, the need for an efficient, well-run recruiting department, led by a director of player personnel or general manager running the operation as the head coach’s proxy, has grown more important.

    There were no consistently scheduled days for the on-field coaching staff to watch recruiting film as a group, which is unusual, the personnel staffer said. The former A&M recruiting staffer bemoaned Fisher’s indifference to the details.

    “We’d sometimes watch kids as an entire staff and provide them all this information that was never ingested,” the recruiting staffer said. “We’d have sheets upon sheets, and (Fisher) didn’t even care. He didn’t want to go over the itineraries for recruiting visits. Didn’t care.”

    Fisher’s reluctance to evolve in certain player acquisition areas also became an issue. Before this year, he rarely utilized the transfer portal, signing only seven scholarship transfers in his first five seasons. He signed 10 before this season out of necessity because more than two dozen players from the 2022 team hit the transfer portal.

    A&M endured constant turnover in its recruiting and personnel department. After signing the No. 1 class in 2022, much of that staff departed, including director of player personnel Marshall Malchow, who joined Dan Lanning at Oregon. Four months later, Fisher hired Kevin Mashack from Indiana to succeed Malchow but parted ways with him after a year. For the past five months, A&M hasn’t had a director of player personnel, a position filled at every other SEC program and every Power 5 program in Texas.

    “That position is so, so important in today’s environment,” Bjork told The Athletic.

    That A&M doesn’t have a player personnel director with the winter transfer portal window set to open on Dec. 4 is “alarming,” the former personnel staffer said.

    While the recruiting department was an afterthought, Fisher was passionate about landing top players.

    Fisher has always recruited high school prospects well. Of his 13 signing classes as a head coach, 10 ranked in the top 10 nationally. Former staffers lauded Fisher’s charisma with recruits and families and ability to form bonds with them. “Jimbo is a great closer,” the former A&M recruiting staffer said.

    But the pursuit of the top-ranked 2022 class, which is the highest-rated in the modern era, became an obsession for Fisher and his staff, to the point that Fisher inquired about the 247Sports Class Calculator and how certain commits would affect A&M’s recruiting ranking. The former A&M recruiting staffer said Fisher ignored character questions if the recruits were five-star prospects.

    “He’s like, ‘Nope, he’s a five-star, we wanna take him,’” the staffer said.

    Multiple members of that signing class broke team rules that warranted suspensions. Seven members of the 2022 class transferred out after their first season, including all four who were suspended.

    “It’s like we’ve collected the most talent possible but I don’t think it was really strategically done the way you’d build a roster,” the current team staffer said. “They were just acquiring talent. I don’t know how much of a team it was.”

    That could apply to the staff as well. Although Fisher had three former head coaches on his staff — Petrino, defensive coordinator DJ Durkin and offensive line coach Steve Addazio — and trusted them to do their jobs, team staffers say Fisher provided no clear direction on how people were supposed to operate.

    “We had no idea what was going on or when we were off,” the former A&M recruiting staffer said. “He could take his private jet and go back home to see his kids or wherever, and we’re sitting there like, ‘Well, shoot, now we have the weekend off, didn’t know about that because Jimbo didn’t care to tell us.’”

    Fisher kept a tight circle, confiding mostly in his right-hand man, director of football operations Mark Robinson, and receivers coach Dameyune Craig. But the buck stopped with Fisher and processes often bottlenecked as a result.

    “He was the only one who could make a decision,” the athletic department staffer said. “Nobody else was empowered to make a decision.”

    The chaos trickled down to the roster. Although disciplinary measures for those 2022 freshmen became public, multiple people within the program described poor day-to-day discipline and accountability for players toward the end of the Fisher era. Being late to meetings or workouts was met with few, if any, consequences.

    “It was kids doing whatever they wanted,” the former assistant said. “And Jimbo showed a little leniency to those kids. Then, the older kids on the team were saying, ‘When we were kids on the team, you didn’t let us do it that way.’ It wasn’t good.”

    After those 2022 recruits left the program, discipline improved in 2023. But the on-field issues persisted. Quarterback Conner Weigman’s season-ending injury in September was a major blow. The offensive line struggled more than ever. A&M’s special teams allowed three touchdown returns and was one of the worst units nationally in kickoff coverage (Fisher didn’t have a full-time on-field assistant dedicated to special teams).

    A 15-point road loss to Miami in Week 2 foreshadowed issues that lingered. One-score losses to Alabama, Tennessee and Ole Miss left fans and school leadership frustrated. “Our program is stuck in neutral,” Bjork said the day A&M fired Fisher.

    Over time, the dysfunction took its toll. Despite having top-10 roster talent each of the past three seasons, A&M went 19-15 overall, 10-13 against SEC teams and 12-14 against Power 5 competition under Fisher from 2021 to ’23. That included seven consecutive losses in games decided by one score and a nine-game road losing streak. The athletic department staffer called football the worst-run sport in A&M’s athletic department.

    “It seems like things were just really hard,” Bjork told The Athletic. “And look, winning is hard, I get it. But processes and procedures should not be hard.”


    A Week 2 loss to Miami this September put a concerning ceiling on Fisher’s sixth season. (Sam Navarro / USA Today)
    So where does Texas A&M go from here?

    The administration is more than a week into a wide-ranging coaching search. The sooner A&M can get someone in place, the better. Bjork set the opening day of the winter transfer portal window, Dec. 4, as an informal deadline to give the new coach a chance to retain as much of the roster as possible.

    Several names have been connected to the A&M job. Mike Elko, who is only the second coach to take Duke to consecutive bowl appearances, seems like a natural fit given his previous experience with A&M as Fisher’s defensive coordinator.

    UTSA coach Jeff Traylor, who has taken the Roadrunners to consecutive conference championships and has them in the mix for a third, would provide a Texas-heavy identity given his background as a former state championship-winning high school coach in the state. Kansas coach Lance Leipold’s work pulling the Jayhawks from the ashes would give the Aggies a builder. Arizona coach Jedd Fisch’s varied background includes extensive NFL experience coupled with his revival of the Wildcats, who went winless the season before he took over.

    Bjork has specific traits he’s seeking in the next coach. Among the dozen attributes he listed, phrases like “supreme organizational skills,” a “culture of discipline” and someone who “can capitalize on modern day college athletics” stand out given Fisher’s shortcomings.

    This time, there will be no plaques, no 10-year guaranteed contracts. The hire will be more grounded in reality. But the Aggies won’t change their lofty ambitions. If they can keep their loaded roster together, they should.

    “Expectations should be sky-high there, because of the resources they have,” the former assistant said. “That school deserved way more than what we gave them the last few years.”

    The Fisher hire proved that it’s not as simple as pairing a big-time coach with a ton of resources. There are no shortcuts to a championship. Texas A&M must find its man to build the program without skipping steps.

    “The ingredients for a championship are here,” Bjork said. “Aggies want to do it the right way and deserve excellence in everything that we do.”

     

    Holy crap, A&M is going full on tar and feather smear campaign on Jimbo.  There is no way all this is coming out without people being told to talk to make it appear A&M had no choice....

     

     

    I mean none of its surprising....but how much is coming out does shock me.  Everything Jimbo did wrong short of illegal player payments is getting fed to the press....

     

    Bjork order a code red on Jimbo....

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Like 1
    • Drool 1
    • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
×
×
  • Create New...