Stewart Mandel sounds off on Jimbo Fisher, Nick Saban dispute: 'The level it went to puzzled me'

Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher are back in the news, this time over Texas A&M’s response to Saban’s comments about recruiting. The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel had some interesting thoughts on The Paul Finebaum Show about how much the situation escalated, especially with the new turn.

On3’s Andy Wittry reported Texas A&M asked the SEC to consider suspending or fining Saban after he alleged the Aggies “bought every player on their team” through NIL — referring to their No. 1-ranked recruiting class this year, according to the On3 Consensus Team Recruiting Ranking. Fisher responded with a fiery press conference, and both coaches received a public reprimand from the SEC.

Mandel argued Texas A&M was due to receive a boost in recruiting after an impressive 2020 season, and this year was the timeline. However, he said he was surprised at how out of hand things got after Saban’s initial comments.

“This is an interesting time for A&M football,” Mandel said. “They had a great season two years ago and usually, that’s when you get the recruiting bump. So they had a great 2020 season, that recruiting bump would come in 2022. They take great umbrage with any notion that they didn’t earn that No. 1 class the old fashioned way, whatever that may be. I get why Jimbo’s defensive about it, but the level it went to just puzzled me because the truth is they didn’t buy their whole class, I don’t think that’s true. I think Saban went too far on that.

“But to suggest that NIL money had nothing to do with any of those kids’ decisions is naive, just as it is for most of college football recruiting now. This isn’t just going on at A&M. It’s going on everywhere. It seems like things died down in Destin. Those emails that you’re referring to were before that. I assume people have carried on, but I think this will come back up certainly at SEC media days and then again when they play each other in early October.”

Stewart Mandel: On3 report ‘not the first indication’ Texas A&M was ‘furious’ with Saban’s comments

Mandel also addressed what else he’s heard about Texas A&M’s reaction to Saban’s remarks. He said Wittry’s report about the emails wasn’t the first time he’d heard about how angry the university was.

“First of all, I found it really amusing that they wanted to suspend Nick Saban and their own coach went out and, I would say, his press conference was exponentially more violation of sportsmanship than what Nick Saban had said,” Mandel said. “But this was a big deal at A&M. I think that in the news media cycle that moves fast, you might have thought initially, ‘Oh, that’s crazy. He said that they buy their recruiting class,’ and then that’s going to pass in 24-48 hours.

“This is not the first indication I’ve gotten that A&M people were really, really furious at Saban. Not just Jimbo Fisher. Ross Bjork’s obviously directly involved in that.”