Is Texas A&M Football a “Turnkey” National Contender For Next Coach?

How Ready is Texas A&M Football to Compete for a Championship?

The discourse around whether Texas A&M football is an elite job is once again flaring up. This is mostly driven by national talking head Josh Pate’s insistence that the A&M job is one of the country’s best; in fact, he ranked it 3rd in the SEC recently. This so frazzled some rival fans that they apparently began appealing to… esoteric magic? Mystical beings? Spectres? Phantoms, even? as reasons that the Aggies are not as good of a job as Pate seems to think. The argument seems to go something like this:

• 1) Pate: Job and program are different. A&M has not been an elite program (defined as historical accomplishments) but is an elite job (defined by current advantages and resources).
• 2) Twitter Fan of X School: Uh, what? Do you really think A&M is better than X School?
• 3) Pate: Yes
• 4) Twitter Fan of X School: I can’t believe you’re saying this. We win so many more games than they do! We have so many more skins on the wall!

Let’s put this a different way.

1. Job and program, while highly correlated, are independent variables. Job refers to a school’s current advantages and resources, while program refers to a school’s historical accomplishments. Being discrete concepts independent of one another, these two should not be confused.
2. Either of these concepts at a school can be predicated as elite if they have a uniquely high level of their constituent factors.
3. Texas A&M football has a uniquely high level of current advantages and resources.
   1. Location near several recruiting hotbeds,
   2. Institutional commitment to football (recent facility upgrades, NIL commitment, willingness to pay out for top assistants) and a football-friendly culture
   3. Affiliated with the best conference in the sport
   4. One of the top home field advantages in the nation
   5. One of the highest revenue-generating athletic programs in the country
   6. Boosters who are, generally speaking, more patient than not (see the amount of time given to Sumlin and Fisher when the results didn’t match the resource commitment)
4. Therefore, Texas A&M football is an elite job.

I’m not sure which part of this you could disagree with! There are certainly some subjective parts in there, but at the most, those would be quibbles that only people with antagonistic priors would make.

If your mind goes to this question: “well, if all this is true, then why aren’t they an elite program?” then you are confusing the categories. Again these are independent variables, though there is a correlation between them. You do not need a uniquely high level of historical accomplishment to have a uniquely high level of current advantages and resources, and you do not need to have a uniquely high level of current advantages and resources to have a uniquely high level of historical accomplishment.

So, with that out of the way, look at this chart!

This job is ready for someone to take the reins and lead the Aggies to a national championship. Readier than any job has been in quite some time, as a matter of fact!

This is a turnkey job. This is a job that any coach in the country would want. There’s an element where you have to know who to go after, but I feel good about Texas A&M football getting the right guy in here. When they do, the sky is the limit.