Kirk Herbstreit addresses Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M NIL rumors

Kirk Herbstreit isn’t going to pretend to know what’s going on at Texas A&M with the NIL. But the ESPN analyst, like most, has taken notice of the Aggies’ top-ranked recruiting class.

In a recent appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, Kirk Herbstreit discussed Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher’s response to accusations that the Aggies are buying recruits.

“He got a little bit irritated with not just media,” Herbstreit said. “He tried to pull out wherever the quote came from and it was pretty funny to listen to him try to describe whoever the source was. Then he got out there basically without saying Lane Kiffin’s name — because Lane Kiffin has been doing a bunch of stuff on social media taking shots at A&M for how much money they’re spending. (Fisher) denied all of it. He said, ‘You’re implying that we can’t recruit or that we don’t have a great academic institution and football program.’ He was all wound up, man. I have no idea what’s true and what’s not in this era of NIL. There are always rumors that A&M has a bunch of money and boosters throwing a money into a pot and then just divvying it up to players and recruits.”

Texas A&M signed the No. 1 recruiting class in 2022 according to On3’s Team Consensus Rankings. That includes five-star receiver Evan Stewart, whose NIL Valuation of $778,000 ranks him third among all high school prospects. The Aggies class has an average valuation of $60,000 across 29 incoming players.

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin recently joked that A&M should incur a “luxury tax” because of their high-figure NIL deals. Kiffin went on to say some schools simply don’t have the funds to compete, offering up the idea of a salary cap like that of the NFL. Alabama coach Nick Saban chimed in with similar comments, resulting in Fisher firing back.

“Players and your team, they do get those things,” Fisher said. “We were one of the lower ones. I mean if I remember right it was Nick [Saban] who brought it up that his quarterback got a million-dollar deal. And that was great. Ohio State put out an article that they have the highest NIL deals of anybody in the country, which is legal, it’s all legal, it’s fine.

“But that had nothing to do with this class or anything else… this was hard work by our staff. It’s insulting to the kids who come here, that you insinuate that. And that people insinuate that, off of things taken off a message board, Bro Bible, by a guy named ‘Sliced Bread‘ whoever the heck that is, who has no clue about what goes on. But NIL is here to stay in college football, it’s going to be a factor in college football, there is no doubt. … But those reports and the things that people say are very irresponsible…and people need to figure out the truth before they do it.”

To Fisher’s point, it’s not as if the Aggies didn’t recruit well before the NIL. They landed top 10 classes in each of the previous three seasons, most recently signing the No. 7 class in 2021. And even if this were solely due to the NIL, as Fisher said, it’s all allowed under the new rules.

Like most new things, the NIL will certainly take some getting used to. Expect a set of guidelines to be ironed out in the near future, but until then there will always be questions in cases like that of Texas A&M.