Could Formerly Beloved Baylor Coach Head to Texas A&M Football?
Before any of you ask: no, I am not suggesting Art Briles as the next head coach of Texas A&M football.
Matt Rhule, however, is a different story.
Rhule, now at Nebraska, resurrected the Baylor program after the mess that was left in the wake of the Briles scandal, taking the Bears to the Big 12 championship game in his third year. They ended up losing to Jalen Hurts and Oklahoma, but both their regular season game against the Sooners and the championship game were extremely close, even though the talent gap between the two programs was quite wide. In the latter case, the Bears lost their starting quarterback and still took OU to overtime.
Rhule is highly regarded in the sport as a program builder, hence why the moribund Cornhuskers hired him after a failed stint as the coach of the Panthers. As a head coach at both Temple and Baylor, Rhule has turned around programs that were bottoming out and built them into really solid squads on a strict three-year timeline. In his first year at Nebraska, the Huskers are currently squarely in the middle of the “bottoming out” phase, and are hoping to begin building starting with next year’s squad.
So would Rhule leave Nebraska mid-rebuild, and would the Aggies be interested? This is a guy who would come with a bit of a price tag, to be sure. However, I think there’s some smoke here. Billy Liucci mentioned Rhule’s name several times on the most previous episode of the Loochador podcast, which raised the eyebrows of several Aggie fans. Rhule obviously has connections in the state from his time at Baylor, and he also clearly has connections to a key piece of the Aggie program in Elijah Robinson.
That said, I’m not sure this is the direction I personally would want Texas A&M football to go in. I’m not sure that Rhule is the guy who can bring in top-level talent on the recruiting trail, and even his best Baylor team was only an above-average team. He’s never built a true contender and doesn’t bring much in the way of innovation. Of course, he would have more resources at his disposal at A&M and would be able to pull better assistant coaches—Rhule is a CEO-type coach—and he would be almost certain to retain Robinson’s services, which is a huge plus. I would be intrigued, but also not necessarily high on the potential when it comes to championship contention, which is where the Aggies are aiming with this hire.
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