weren't you paying attention last week to lopez and deluca???? a&m is HANDS DOWN a top ten football program and they could get ANYONE THEY WANTED. c'mon!
You can't tell me that those numbers are not at least a little bit skewed because they include numbers from The 40-60 when A&M was absolutely terrible and was a completely different school. They didn't even allow women until 1963 or something like that. Do you really think they recruited very well during that era as a military school with no women? That really skews the winning percentage if you ask me. Although I agree that Florida State is a bigger time program than A&M. Our heydey was in the 90's when we were a top 10 team throughout the decade (I think 9th best win percentage or something), but Florida State was #1 during the 90s.
The Big 12 is a weak conference. The SEC is stacked now and will be stacked in the future. IMO you will have a harder time building a championship team at Arkansas than you would at A&M. At Arkansas, you're going up against LSU, Alabama, and Auburn annually. Then you have to deal with Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida from the East. Who do you fear in the Big 12 besides UT and OU? Nebraska? And I'm not even getting into recruiting - A&M has a natural advantage. PS - I would rather live in NW Arkansas than College Station.
Doesn't everyone here pretty much say Lopez is a moron? Why on earth would you care what he has to say on this topic?
A&M isn't a top-tier destination anymore. That requires a level of recent success that A&M just hasn't had. Also, a lot of the jig is the way you market your team. A team like Notre Dame can suck for a while and still maintain the spotlight by having short fuses and firing their coach early and continuously raising the stakes. Same with Alabama. If you keep searching for coaches, ESPN will keep covering your school's coaching searches. A&M stuck with their bozo way too long. They shouldve dumped his sorry ass a while ago instead of allowing their program to deteriorate even more. And on top of that, A&M runs an offense that even major high school teams would laugh at. They've gone backwards in almost every sense. And yet, in spite of that, they're still A&M. They still have boosters, money, history, etc... They're no top 10 destination, but come on coaches will come when presented the opportunity. You know its kind of funny that everyone was saying the same thing about Alabama last year. Especially after Rich Rodriguez turned them down. And then they got Nick Saban and suddenly Alabama became relevant again. If they can get someone like Chris Peterson, they instantly become relevant again because of the notoriety that comes with him and his offense. I mean people bashed Florida after the Ron Zook era and they hired a similar guy to Peterson (Urban Meyer) who took a non-BCS team to a BCS game. I honestly think A&M will be fine. Their AD just needs to be smart and not get fixated on the Spurriers of the world because Alabama got way too caught up in Rich Rodriguez and got lucky because Nick Saban is an uber-flake and needed to get out of Miami. to qualify all this - Keep in mind, I go to UT.
Reading all these posts I feel like you guys are overvaluing the importance of recent success in correlation to job prestige.
I think most coaches would look at A&M as a career graveyard. Ags are gonna have to hire from below, not above, this time.
to be fair, coach fran also turned down the alabama job. a&m definitely isn't a job to sneeze at. i really don't understand why they can't win.
The way I see it .. because we have not been successful recently makes it a 2nd tier job, which is not bad IMO. It just means we are probably going to get a good coach, but we are not going to some huge names just jumping to come here. If we can win over a period of 5-10 years consistently, it will turn into a tier 1 job IMO. I still think Sherman is a very likely choice. I keep hearing the name Leach come up, but I'm not sure he'd come here and I have no idea why we'd want a guy with such a pirate fetish.
I wonder if Sherman will get some HC offers from the NFL, especially if the Texans continue to improve/win. He did interview for the Cardinal job last summer. I've heard Leach come up a couple times as well. That would be an interesting choice but a retread IMO. Aggy defense is horrible and Leach runs possibly the worst defense in the Big 12.
Correction. WVU, Louisville., Rutgers, Clemson, etc... are 2nd tier programs. You guys are closer to 3rd tier.
Nah...A&M is a 2nd tier program. They might not have had the recent success the teams you mentioned have had, but they still have the resources to make them a 2nd tier program.
