Jimbo Fisher embracing tradition, striving for excellence at Texas A&M
HOUSTON — Hopefully, Texas A&M football players — particularly quarterbacks — learn as fast as coach Jimbo Fisher has.
Fisher opened a speech at the Houston Touchdown Club’s Texas A&M Day luncheon with an enthusiastic: “Howdy.”
Then, he joked that A&M is the only place where the traditions book is bigger than his playbook.
He went on about A&M’s culture, academics and commitment to athletic success.
“I’ve never been anywhere where people generally live the culture. They take pride in traditions and history and everything that goes on I’ve never been anywhere where people truly take so much pride in their school, in the environment and the atmosphere in what they want to create.”
Fisher told the crowd he wasn’t interested in building a team because teams come and go. He said he wanted to build a program, which could consistently reach a level of excellence.
He then added: “I think we can win championships. If I didn’t feel that way I wouldn’t be here.”
That brought a huge ovation from the Aggie-filled crowd.
Before the luncheon he spoke to a group of reporters about social media, the Aggies quarterback competition, replacing recently-departed offensive tackle Koda Martin and the importance of Houston to A&M’s football success.
“We’ve got to live here. We’re talking about 70 miles down the road,” Fisher said. “It’s one of the best football Meccas in the United States of America — Texas high school football in general, but Houston is tremendous.
“The Houston area, the Dallas area, all the different areas of East Texas. San Antonio and up I-35 to Austin and everywhere in the state. We’re going to (recruit), but Houston being so close… the number of people, he number of programs. The quality of coaches and players. It’s an area we have to be extremely strong in to be successful.”
Dan Moore is a perfect example. A native of Beaumont (that’s close enough to Houston to count), Fisher mentioned him as a likely replacement for Martin, who opted to transfer to Syracuse after missing much of spring drills following a heat stroke.
“(Martin) missed the whole second half of spring, so Dan Moore was in there and did a great job. Dan is very talented. We have other guys. We played the whole second half without him. We adjusted. We’ll be OK.
“We move and match. We could move the right tackle to left tackle. We’ll mix and match and work through that.”
The Aggies are still working to find a starting quarterback.
Although Nick Starkel, who passed for more than 300 yards in the spring game appeared to have an edge over Kellen Mond, Fisher indicated they progress they make between now and August would have a bigger impact on the competition.
The difference may be which quarterback better understands Fisher’s offense and picks up the nuances of his system.
“Some do it quickly,” Fisher said." We had a guy (Jameis Winston) win the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt freshman. It can happen quickly. It can happen at a slower pace.
“I like the progress we’ve made. Our guys have played well and made good decisions for the most part in the spring game. We’ll see how much they work on it, how much they grind and how much film they study and how much they can process as we move forward.”
There’s no doubt that Fisher is putting in some film study of his own. The Aggies 2019 recruiting class is currently ranked second in the nation.
Fisher will do whatever he can to keep A&M there — if not higher. That means looking ahead past 2019 and for an old dog to learn the new tricks of social media.
“I’m a believer you have to recruit three classes at once,” he said. “I believe you have to look and evaluate those classes down as much as you can. You may need secondary guys. You may need to take more here because there’s not as many here. That’s always part of recruiting — from where you’re at, what are you going to do and coming on after that.
There’s a lot of things going on in recruiting that people don’t understand why you have to do it.”
Social media has become an important vehicle in recruiting. Fisher has had to embrace it to some degree, but maintains that winning in recruiting still comes down to the old-fashioned approach.
“Social media is great, but why are you going to put your life on it?” he said. "Why are you going to put your thoughts on it? We communicate with the kids quite well. We’ve done quite well everywhere I’ve ever been recruiting in the style we have. Some of our coaches are on it. Just be careful with how you do it, what you say on there and how you handle yourself.
At the end of the day it’s still going to be down to personal relationships. All that other is good, but at the end of the day it comes down to that personal touch.”
