[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

After the disappointing Sumlin administration, Texas A&M decided it so loved Jimbo Fisher they paid Florida State $7 million to disentangle him from that university so they could entangle him with a ten-year contract worth $75 million of their own. After holding par for two years with the 8-5 – plus or minus one – rut A&M nurtured into a comfortable groove, Fisher led the Aggies to a remarkable 9-1 2020 record in the all-SEC schedule gauntlet COVID year. The powers that be decided they loved Jimbo $1.5 million a year more that day than yesterday. A Gene Stallings-less (I maintain he would have known better) Board of Regents upped the contract to ninety-five point six million dollars effective January I, 2022.

It didn’t work out. Winning became a problem, but under Fisher A&M was able to assemble talent. So much so that Lane Kiffin, college football’s equivalent of the intellectual dark web, pointed out how great recruiting classes were at A&M while making sure to hint that Fisher’s done less with more and, in this age when buying players is a-okay as long as you have a plausible money laundering Name, Image, and Likeness story handy, that it was cash and not the coach that brought the five stars to College Station.

“I don’t know how you collect much better. So, congratulations to their group that collected these guys,” Kiffin said at a press conference the Monday before playing Fisher and A&M. Kiffin is good at twisting knives. Blake Toppmeyer wrote in USA Today last week, “Just when I thought Kiffin might be finished dunking on Fisher, he hung on the rim.” After the “collected” comment, someone asked the Ole Miss coach if the team or fans might rally around a coach having a rough time of it.