Ross Bjork on if Ole Miss loss was last straw: It's totality of how the program operates

Texas A&M opted to fire Jimbo Fisher on Sunday and eat a huge financial cost to do so, paying him a $77.6 million buyout over the course of the next eight years.

Athletics director Ross Bjork explained Sunday exactly why the program made the decision it did, even after a blowout win over Mississippi State.

“It’s totality. It really is,” Bjork said. “You can’t say it’s one game because then what happens after last night, right? We had fun. We won by whatever, 41 points. So it’s totality of how the program operates on a day-to-day basis. Something was not working to reach our full potential, so it’s not one game, it’s not one moment, it’s not one win, one loss.”

Still, the timing of the move made it come as a surprise to many.

“The timing of that game and the timing of things that were coming down the track, to me we had to move this past week,” Ross Bjork said.

Texas A&M will be hoping it can land a coach that can eventually guide the program to the College Football Playoff, perhaps even routinely challenge for the SEC title.

That’s the standard and the expectation. Fisher simply wasn’t meeting it.

But there was more to it than that when it came to firing the sixth-year coach. Bjork just saw some key elements missing from the program.

“Honestly just consistency and positivity and confidence,” Ross Bjork said. “That’s really what it boils down to. Everything we do in this world rises and falls on leadership, good and bad. So how you make decisions on a consistent basis, how leadership is provided on a consistent basis, that plays into we’re going to run these plays, we’re going to map these plays out on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We’re going to practice them. Then in the game, do people have the confidence to run that play?”

Fisher just wasn’t running a convincing enough operation to keep his job, even as steep as his buyout was.

So the Aggies will eat the cost and look for a coach who can coax more out of his roster. And Fisher proved it’s possible to get absolutely loaded rosters in College Station.

The next guy will have to have a better operation than Fisher.

“It all adds up, no matter what the decision is, no matter if it’s a tactical football decision or anything else,” Ross Bjork said. “And so to me the fundamentals of that process, there was something just not clicking to provide confidence for everyone in the program.”