Someone in the Texas A&M Athletic Department took all the attention away from a pretty good day of college football, including one of the greatest endings in Iron Bowl history.

For 3 hours on a Saturday night, Mark Stoops had become the head coach of Texas A&M.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but it seems Ross Bjork had been discussing the position with Mark Stoops. He was doing this without the knowledge of his bosses and didn’t have full authority. Stoops and Bjork had reached an agreement. All that was needed was approval from Bjork’s higher-ups.

From what I can tell, Billy Liucci with TexAgs posted on his website that the hire of Stoops was all but done. Liucci is also the person who broke the news that Jimbo had been fired. He’s clearly connected to someone who said it was okay to post the information.

The hiring of Mark Stoops by Texas A&M hit social media, and all hell broke loose. I’ve never seen anything like it. My phone blew up from people asking what was going on. Twitter/X was full of people in disapproval. NOBODY was supportive of the hire.

For good reason. You don’t fire Jimbo Fisher to hire Mark Stoops. It makes ZERO sense that someone at Texas A&M was even talking to Stoops, much less finalizing details for his hiring.

Mark Stoops was never getting hired at Texas A&M. I don’t think he would have gotten the approval from those above Bjork. A lot of assumptions were made. It was a done deal, but it never was.

Either way, it’s an embarrassment. It’s further proof the chain of command at Texas A&M is broken and needs to be fixed. I don’t know precisely what needs to be fixed, but someone above Bjork better be super pissed off if this ever happened and get it fixed.

Watching Bjork’s initial press conference and interviews over the last couple of weeks made me think we had an actual plan for hiring Jimbo’s replacement. It’s now apparent we don’t. That’s frustrating.

The Mark Stoops era at Texas A&M provided and will provide a ton of good humor. Unfortunately, it’s an embarrassment of leadership. It should have never happened.

Where Do The Aggies Go From Here:

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened in college football. Most people don’t know, but Alabama once “hired” Rich Rodriguez, who decided not to come. The guy they wound up hiring would be Nick Saban. It’s wild to think what would have happened if Rich Rodriguez had taken the job and not Saban.

There’s another instance where Tennessee “hired” Greg Schiano, but similar to A&M and Stoops, the fan base revolted, and Schiano didn’t take the job. The Volunteers would eventually hire Jeremy Pruitt, and we know how that turned out. It wasn’t good.

Is Texas A&M hiring the next Nick Saban? Probably not. But they can avoid hiring the next Jeremy Pruitt.

Someone needs to get their ass chewed on this morning. Then, immediately settle down and get re-focused on hiring the best coach for Texas A&M. If that means taking the keys from Ross Bjork, then so be it. It would be best if he were talking to Mark Stoops.

I believe Texas A&M had a plan to see how the games this weekend played out. Most notably, with Ryan Day at Ohio State and Kalen DeBoer at Washington.

Day lost, and DeBoer won.

The Aggie leadership needs to get back to their original plan. Reach out to Day and ask his interest and if he can make a decision in the next 72 hours. I still believe he’s the best hire for the job. Conform with DeBoer he’s deciding once Washington is out of the hunt for the College Football Playoff.

You reach out to Jed Fisch and confirm he’s still interested despite what happened on Saturday night. You tell him nothing was officially decided, and an erroneous report occurred.

You also put Elijah Robinson and Mike Elko back in serious consideration. I have some concerns with Elijah Robinson based on how the team played in his two games as head coach. Maybe there was just too much “Jimbo Stink,” but many apparent errors that somebody should have cleaned up weren’t. They still looked a lot like a Jimbo-coached team.

Robinson may need an entire off-season to change the program’s culture. I know the players want to play for Robinson, but there’s a massive difference between wanting to play for someone and winning football games. We don’t have enough information on what kind of coach Elijah Robinson could be. I wanted to see more out of him these last two games.

As for Elko, I still think he’s the ultimate fallback guy, but you can’t wait forever. He would stabilize a lot of the issues Jimbo left. This feels like a “lick your wounds” hire at this point, but there are much worse hires.

The other thing I would do at this point, but it won’t happen, is to reach out to Lane Kiffin and Eli Drinkwitz. If you’re going to talk to SEC coaches, this is who it should be. Certainly not Mark Stoops.

I know many people don’t like Kiffin, and I have issues with him, but he would elevate A&M’s football program from a Win/Loss standpoint.

The number one focus for the coaching search should be SOLELY on finding a coach that will improve the number of wins. That’s it.

Sure, there has to be some element to being a fit, but don’t let emotion miss out on someone that can elevate the program to national prominence. That’s what Bjork said was the mission in firing Jimbo and getting a replacement.

While what happened with Stoops on Saturday is an embarrassment, the A&M administration still has the opportunity to do what they set out to do – Improve the number of wins from Jimbo Fisher.

Someone in the administration needs to chew on whoever’s ass needs chewing on and then get everyone calmed down and back on the mission.

This whole thing can still be salvaged with the proper focus. Hopefully, that happens, and we can all look back on the last Saturday night of the regular season and laugh.

Right, Aggie leadership?