What are the chances that Texas A&M football “bought” its talent?

Texas A&M football has gotten a lot of grief due to their suspiciously-good 2022 recruiting class, but just how guilty do they look in all of this?

Name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals have taken college football by storm as of late, as the legalization of such deals had been demanded for quite some time leading up to now. However, many are regretting what they once wished for, as the concept has since been used as a dirty method of landing talent.

Perhaps the largest CFB program being widely speculated of committing such an act is Texas A&M football, and when comparing the Aggies’ untouchable 2022 recruiting haul to the ones that came before it, it’s rather easy to see why.

The Aggies have been sitting pretty as one of the better recruiters in the country, having solidified themselves as a consistent top-10 power in the annual team rankings. But nonetheless, they have never come close to what this current offseason has done for them.

To put things simply, a recruiting class with two or three 5-stars would normally be seen as a near-perfect one by A&M’s standards. Yet guess how many 5-stars 2022—the first offseason for legal NIL deals to make their mark—gave them? Eight.

Not only is it the greatest recruiting haul that the Aggies have ever seen, but it’s also the greatest that the entire college football world has ever seen. This is despite their brand clearly not being great enough to obtain said haul by pure happenstance.

Let’s be real here: Does Texas A&M football have the biggest college football brand in its state? Nope, the Longhorns do. Does it have the biggest brand in the SEC? Nope and any chance of it reaching that title is far away from now. Does it even have the biggest brand in its division? Not even close.

But while the Aggies may not have as historically dominant of a brand as some of the ones that they are acquainted with, they certainly have a profitable one.

Just how profitable is Texas A&M Football?

According to 247 Sports, A&M is ranked 12th on the list of most profitable CFB programs overall, while being tied with Texas for first in regards to estimated annual value (as of December 2021).

This is definitely believable when considering the football-loving state that the school is located in, along with just how successful it is at consistently packing Kyle Field—a stadium that holds over 100,000 people.

In other words, Texas A&M doesn’t have the brand to earn the greatest recruiting class ever, but it certainly has the money to buy it. And while all of that looks shady enough, the distressed response that came from Aggies’ head coach Jimbo Fisher the other day really put the icing on the cake.

When Alabama head coach Nick Saban called out A&M for their unnatural spike in talent, Fisher handled his moment to respond about as poorly as he could. He did so by spending less time actually denying the statement, instead of making a point of baselessly claiming that Saban had a dirty past, along with pretending that his accusation criticized the athletes somehow.

If you are ever accused of doing something that is frowned upon, be sure to prioritize defending yourself instead of offending your accuser. By failing to do so, you’ll basically come off as saying, “well he’s done bad things as well,” and that could very easily be interpreted as an indication of guilt. Fisher didn’t think of this, and that’s why he fooled virtually no one with his song and dance.

There is nothing concrete that proves Texas A&M football is guilty of abusing the NIL legalizations, so all we can do is go off of the context that has been provided. And when doing just that, does it look like the program paid for a fair portion of its recruits? Absolutely.