Simultaneously, Texas A&M – in need of a new coach after firing Jimbo Fisher Sunday morning – is both a resource-laden opportunity and an almost thankless proposition.
Consider: The Aggies are willfully parting with Fisher, the former national championship-winning coach it pried away six years ago from Florida State, to the tune of some $77 million in buyout obligations.
On the heels of an 51-10 win against SEC brethren Mississippi State.
The Aggies, for all their absolute undeniable commitment to providing every tangible resource for a top-tier football program, have not won a conference title of any sort since 1998. They have one season of double-digit wins this century.
They also just opened perhaps the finest indoor-football facility in all of college athletics; the 160-yard, state-of-the-art venue also features air conditioning.
There is plenty to like about the runway for Aggies football and the trappings that come along with it.
Equally, the questions are undeniable. Why has no Texas A&M coach since R.C. Slocum been unable to win a conference title? How much more difficult does this job become moving forward, with former Big 12 rivals Texas and Oklahoma crashing into the SEC beginning in 2024?
Expect several prominent coaches throughout the sport to be linked to the vacancy.
FootballScoop examines those potential candidates and their fits with the Aggies.
Mike Elko: Duke’s current second-year coach has worked wonders with the Blue Devils, who despite the loss of star quarterback Riley Leonard in the season’s first month has nonetheless won six games, taken ranked North Carolina into double-overtime this weekend and missed upsetting Notre Dame by mere moments in late September.
Elko has obvious ties to the Texas A&M program; he served with distinction as Fisher’s defensive coordinator through four seasons in College Station, Texas, from 2018-2021.
Sources tell FootballScoop that Elko has an approximately $5 million buyout to leave the Blue Devils.
Dan Lanning: Despite having a loss on the season a in near-miss at undefeated Washington, Lanning’s Oregon team appears to be the class in the PAC-12 and should be a College Football Playoff participant if it wins out and takes the final PAC-12 championship title in the process.
Lanning’s next win atop the Ducks program will be his 20th in less than two full seasons, and, most notable to coaches who spoke with FootballScoop in recent weeks about the Oregon program, Lanning has quickly rebuilt the Ducks into the image of an SEC program.
Which, of course, makes sense as Lanning’s formative years in the profession include learning under both Nick Saban and Kirby Smart, who saw Lanning help Georgia to its first of two-straight national titles in 2021 before Lanning’s leap to Oregon.
The price-tag for Lanning to leave Oregon, however, is among the steepest in all of college football. He – or his presumable next employer – would be on the hook to Oregon to the tune of $20 million to leave Eugene, barring some negotiated discount that wouldn’t really make sense for the Ducks, who are headed to the Big Ten Conference in 2024.
Jeff Traylor: UTSA’s beloved coach has been brilliant atop the Roadrunners program. Traylor took over at UTSA after his assistant coaching work included stops at power programs Texas and Arkansas, as well as SMU.
All Traylor has done has been guide UTSA to three-straight bowl appearances, position them for a fourth-straight this year and a shot at the American Athletic Conference crown after guiding the Roadrunners to the top of Conference USA.
Plus, Traylor is a Gilmer, Texas, native, and he’s as respected throughout the Lone Star State by prep coaches, sources tell FootballScoop, as just about any collegiate coach in that football-crazed land.
Traylor has a $7 million buyout to exit UTSA, FootballScoop has learned.
But hey, that’s just about one-eleventh of what the Aggies are paying Fisher not to coach them anymore.
Lane Kiffin: The former NFL head coach of the Oakland Raiders who also has sat atop power programs at Tennessee (oh-so-briefly), USC and now has revived Ole Miss has proved to remain among the sharpest offensive minds in all of college football, and after last season Kiffin might have done his best recruiting when he lured defensive coordinator Pete Golding away from Alabama.
Kiffin has proved an effective recruiter for the Rebels, and his program has been extremely active in fortifying their roster via the NCAA Transfer Portal. He’s a players’ coach.
Ole Miss was humbled in dominant fashion this weekend by two-time champ Georgia, but Kiffin also took an admittedly lesser Ole Miss roster and just beat Fisher’s Aggies to open this month. The Rebels will be favored to win their final two games, giving the program a chance for its second 10-win season in three years.
For context: Ole Miss football hasn’t had such a stretch of success since the end of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Despite getting a lucrative new deal after last season from Ole Miss, Kiffin’s bottom-line buyout to exit Oxford, Mississippi, barely changed. He can buy out his deal for approximately $4.5 million.
Kyle Whittingham: Utah’s esteemed veteran coach, now entrenched in that program for some 30 years as an assistant and head man, has proved a rock-solid program-builder and sustainer who’s long remained loyal to the Utes even as other suitors – notably Tennessee years ago, among others – have called.
Whittingham routinely has taken lesser-talented rosters and whipped some of the PAC-12’s elite teams; looking at you, USC. And Whittingham and his staff also have proved to be some of the best talent evaluators and developers in all of the sport.
The Utes still have a chance to record double-digit wins this season, which would mark the fourth time in the past five years and the fourth-straight time in a full season – since Utah played a truncated 2020 schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While it doesn’t seem likely that Whittingham would exit Salt Lake City, his price-tag to do so is ridiculously cheap: a mere $2 million, per records FootballScoop obtained.
Charles Huff: Marshall’s third-year head coach has largely outperformed expectations for the Thunder Herd, and he’s got that signature win from 2022 at tradition-rich Notre Dame. Huff also already this year beat a Virginia Tech team that’s rebuilding nicely under Brent Pry, took down East Carolina and had Dave Doeren’s North Carolina State squad on the ropes before falling, 48-41.
Moreover, Huff has worked for some of the best in the business to shape his program vision, including key time as an assistant coach under James Franklin at both Vanderbilt and Penn State as well as helping Alabama to a title as Nick Saban’s assistant head coach. Too, Huff has NFL experience from his time coaching running backs at the Buffalo Bills.
Huff is an extremely gifted recruiter, inspires as a leader and continues to be a coach on a rising career arc.
And, not that the Aggies are pinching pennies, but Huff’s buyout to exit Marshall is a mere $881,000.
Aaron Glenn: A dazzling player for the Aggies in the early 1990s who went on to become a first-round NFL Draft pick and logged a 15-year pro playing career, Glenn has since transitioned into one of the NFL’s bright young stars.
Currently the defensive coordinator for Dan Campbell’s Detroit Lions, Glenn has been on staff with the Cleveland Browns, New Orleans Saints and as a scout for the Jets.