Jimbo Fisher addresses coaching upheaval, effect on recruiting

While many college athletic programs have always waited until the offseason to make coaching changes, that system is starting to be altered. Throughout the 2021 college football season, many schools have chosen to make coaching changes during the year – and that has caught quite a few people off guard.

Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher was asked about the coaching upheaval that’s taken place this season during his weekly Monday press conference and offered his feelings on the situation.

“I don’t know the circumstances … I have my own cocoon,” Fisher said. “I’ve got enough problems of my own right here to fix. I don’t get into it. I hate to see it. I’m not going to to say a guy’s wrong or right – I don’t know the circumstances. But I don’t like to see it. I think it’s tough and bad … and for a guy to do that, there had to be some extreme circumstances because that doesn’t happen very often.”

With nearly a full month still left in the college football regular season, there has been nine FBS head coaching changes – Akron, UConn, Georgia Southern, LSU, TCU, Texas Tech, UMass, USC and Washington State. The Georgia Southern and Texas Tech openings have since been filled with Clay Helton – who was fired at USC – and Joey McGuire, respectively.

For Fisher, he said he knows some of the coaches that were let go and spoke highly of them, but he also made it clear that coaching is a tough career to be in because you have to win – and win often.

“It looks like some of the guys that went … I know the guys were great coaches – highly successful coaches,” Fisher said. “That just shows you in this business it’s, ‘What did you do for me lately?,’ because this is a day-to-day, week-to-week business.”

Fisher, who’s in his fourth season at Texas A&M and has the Aggies sitting at 7-2 overall and 4-2 in SEC play this year, was also asked if all the coaching changes had an effect on recruiting. He said it possibly could, but Texas A&M is staying focused on the players it has been recruiting all along.

“No … we’re on the guys we’re on,” Fisher said. “We’ve been on the right guys and I think we’re going in the right direction. It may [effect it] a little, but I don’t see it a lot right now. We’re locked in on our guys – been for a while.”