Texas A&M football coach Jimbo Fisher didn’t hold back two weeks ago when responding to Alabama’s Nick Saban.
So how would Fisher feel about becoming the permanent rival of Texas when the Longhorns join the Southeastern Conference? League officials are debating whether to maintain an eight-game conference schedule or increase it to nine, with that decision potentially determining whether or not the former Lone Star State foes will resume their collisions on an annual basis.
Texas and Texas A&M have not played since 2011, when the Longhorns pulled out an emotion-packed 27-25 win in College Station.
“I would love it,” Fisher said Wednesday afternoon in a news conference as the SEC’s spring meetings continued in Destin, Florida. “Rivalries are great for college football. In the 1-7 format, it’s whatever the league says our dominant rivalry is. The 3-6 format gives you a second rival, and in this league, there are still a lot of those.”
In an eight-game scenario with one permanent opponent and seven rotating foes, the permanent matchups would likely consist of Alabama-Auburn, Florida-Georgia, Mississippi State-Ole Miss, Tennessee-Vanderbilt, Oklahoma-Texas, Arkansas-Missouri, LSU-Texas A&M and Kentucky-South Carolina.
An annual Aggies-Longhorns matchup would seem a certainty if the SEC implemented three permanent opponents, but Fisher said Wednesday that there wasn’t a consensus among the coaches as to which route to take.
“Each team and each program sees itself differently based on where it’s at or what it does,” he said. “With the new TV contracts, do they up it to nine? I’m all for it.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Wednesday that a scheduling vote may not take place this week, adding, “We have more work to do.”
Wednesday was Fisher’s turn to answer – or not answer – for his role in the verbal spat with Saban over the name, image and likeness landscape. Saban said Fisher’s Aggies “bought every player” in their top-rated signing class through NIL deals, which caused Fisher to hold a news conference and exclaim it was “despicable that a reputable head coach can come out and say this when he doesn’t get his way or things don’t go his way.”
“It’s over with, and we’re done talking about it,” Fisher said Wednesday. “We’re moving on to the future and about going on and trying to fix the problems of what we have in college football. We have a lot more pressing needs than our arguments.”
Asked if he had any regrets about his May 19 tirade, which included calling Saban a narcissist and insinuating that he’s been cheating for years, Fisher said: “No. Things are said, and we move on. We’re moving on to the next thing.”
Fisher seemed much more interested in talking about Texas, which is 3-4 against SEC teams since last defeating the Aggies. The Longhorns lost to LSU in 2019 and at Arkansas last season, and they are hosting Alabama later this year.
“I would love to play Texas,” Fisher said. “If that’s our guy, I would love to play.”
Musical chairs
The world of conference realignment had settled down until last summer, when the announcement that Oklahoma and Texas would be leaving the Big 12 for the SEC shocked the college athletics world. It marked the first time that such elite programs in a Power Five conference chose to leave one league for another.
Could more moves be coming?
“If you would have said to me five years ago that Oklahoma and Oklahoma State could split up, I would have said that I don’t see that,” Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne told reporters. “I don’t think you can discount any possibility, but I don’t think there is a huge desire right now to continue to see musical chairs in college sports.”
Seeking a move
Sankey said Wednesday that the league’s basketball coaches want to move the SEC tournament title game from Sunday to Saturday, but the commissioner added that such a switch may not be able to occur overnight due to various television contracts.
Two of the past three SEC men’s tournament winners, Auburn in 2019 and Tennessee this past season, did not have their impressive runs rewarded by the NCAA selection committee.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.