Even though the Jimbo Fisher era has ended in College Station, the Texas A&M Aggies still have a few more games left to play this season. Oddly enough, Texas A&M achieved bowl eligibility on Saturday by blowing the barn doors off Mississippi State. Despite being 6-4 on the year, the Texas A&M boosters decided that they were done being sold a bunch of snake oil by their former head coach.
The Aggies have two more regular-season games left on the slate for 2023. They will host Abilene Christian on Saturday before traveling to Baton Rouge to take on a strong LSU Tigers team over Thanksgiving Weekend. After that, they should be playing in a meaningless holiday season bowl game. At 6-6, they could be left out, or decide not to play one more time if they did not want to.
However, this is an SEC football team, and nobody quits in the SEC, unless your coach stinks. Regardless, somebody has to lead the Aggies out of the tunnel between now and New Year's. Although they have coordinators on staff with head-coaching experience, do you think the boosters would have let either Bobby Petrino or D.J. Durkin take over this chaotic Fisher mess on their hands?
ESPN's Pete Thamel reported on Sunday morning that Elijah Robinson will be serving as the interim.
Let's learn a little bit more about the interim head coach for the Aggies for the rest of the season.
Jimbo Fisher fired: Who replaces him as Texas A&M interim head coach?
Robinson is in his fifth season on the Texas A&M coaching staff. He played his college football at Penn State from 2004 to 2008 under Joe Paterno. Robinson got his master's at Penn State in 2012, staying around his alma mater's program through 2013. Then, he got connected with Matt Rhule. He first worked for Rhule at Temple in 2014. Robinson then followed him to Baylor in 2017 for one season.
As a coach, Robinson cut his teeth as a defensive line coach. He worked his way up to being an assistant head coach and run game coordinator, in addition to his defensive line work at Texas A&M in 2022. Even though he has never been a head coach before, Robinson is and experienced enough to be given this opportunity in the wake of Fisher being fired. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Ultimately, this is only going to be a two or three-game run with Robinson at the helm of the Aggies. Since this is one of the most financially stable programs in the country, expect for the Texas A&M boosters to go big game hunting in an attempt to replace Fisher with somebody great. Of course, just because they pay a lot of money does not mean that it will work out for Aggie fans in College Station.
The only thing we can hope for is Fisher's long-term successor is not given a tacky trophy or plaque.