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When Jimbo Fisher arrived in College Station in December 2017, his mission was clear. He was going to do everything he could to make Texas A&M a powerhouse both on the field and on the recruiting trail, in order to deliver a national championship to the Aggie faithful. While on-field results are coming more slowly than Aggie fans and boosters may have anticipated, recruiting success is already here for Fisher, who has finished in the top 10 each and every season he has been in charge. His 2022 class was just absolutely insane and regarded by some to be among the best classes of all time. Here are three reasons the Aggies’ haul was at the very least the best in the country.
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Texas A&M 2022 Recruiting Class
3. NIL Growth
Despite what Jimbo Fisher says publicly, there's nothing wrong with admitting that Texas A&M has, at least for the moment, an advantage over a lot of the rest of the country when it comes to the potential NIL deals they can seal with recruits. A&M's alumni base is vast, and it has the financial pull to back the kind of spending the program has reportedly done on its 2022 class.
Reports vary on the exact dollar amount. Frankly, I would not like to be the subject of Jimbo Fisher's next emergency press conference, but the Aggies have done a superb job at adapting to this new era of college football and have set themselves up for recruiting success for years to come.
2. More 5-stars than anyone else
The Blue Chip ratio is a metric devised to predict which teams have a shot at a national title, and it measures how many 4- and 5-star recruits are on a team's roster in any given year. Teams with less than a 50% Blue Chip ratio, meaning they've signed more 2- and 3-star recruits than 4- and 5-star players over the previous four cycles, effectively have little to no chance of winning a championship.
Texas A&M more than qualifies, and they seem to be only moving up the list, grabbing an astonishing eight 5-star recruits, three more than any other program in the country. They also managed an impressive 20 recruits ranked at 4-stars, only bested by Alabama's 21.
This places Jimbo Fisher and his staff with just about the best possible talent pool they could ask for, making their job as coaches much easier.
1. Jimbo Fisher is just a really good recruiter
No matter the methods he uses, be it NIL or what have you, Jimbo Fisher has time and time again proven he's a very good recruiter. Dating back to his first full class with Florida State in 2011, a Jimbo Fisher-coached team has never had a recruiting class ranked lower than 11th in the country, including multiple top three finishes, and the first overall ranking in 2022.
Recruiting success begets further recruiting success, and Fisher has proved that time and time again over the past decade plus. The challenge for Fisher, outside his national championship in 2013 and his College Football Playoff appearance with Florida State in 2014, is translating that success onto the field.
It's one thing to bring in a ton of blue chippers, but it's another thing entirely to get them to mesh together with each other cohesively enough to put a national title contender on the field every Saturday. With the SEC West seemingly only getting more and more difficult as the years progress, it will continue to be a real test for Fisher. He needs to keep showing improvement if he is to stay the top man in College Station and not be cast aside like his predecessor, Kevin Sumlin.
