Hayes: How Texas A&M’s 2022 recruiting class went from historic to irrelevant

DALLAS — In another time, and in now what seems like another strange dimension, Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban spent the spring of 2022 dismantling a relationship of nearly 3 decades.

About, of all things, who cheated more.

Now here we are, as the SEC enters a new era with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma, and the drama that engulfed the conference and college football in the offseason of 2022 is barely recognizable only 2 years later.

Saban retired from Alabama at the end of last season, and Fisher was fired by Texas A&M. And the focal point of those cheating allegations — Fisher’s No. 1-ranked recruiting class — is a shadow of its former “greatest class in college football history” self.

As the Aggies begin their first season under coach Mike Elko, 15 players remain from the 30-player class that quickly became the Exhibit A for all things evil about the emergence of players earning off their name, image and likeness — and college football changing forever.

Of those 15 players, 5 are projected starters for the 2024 season, 5 are 2nd-team backups and the remaining 5 are reserves. Expectations have gone from winning it all, to reaching high ground.

Think about that: Saban and Fisher, who coached together and won a national title at LSU in 2003, who grew up and flourished from similar hardscrabble lives in West Virginia and were as close as coaches could be, blew up a relationship over 5 players of significance.

When the Aggies rolled into SEC Media Days here Thursday, not 1 of the 30 players from the 2022 recruiting class were representing the school. Those who remain are entering their 3rd seasons, and only QB Conner Weigman and WR Noah Thomas are on NFL Draft radars.

A handful of players who transferred from that class are NFL prospects, including DT Walter Nolen (Ole Miss) and WR Evan Stewart (Oregon). But there were many misses, including 6 players in the Top 50 of the 247Sports composite player ranking who have yet to make a significant impact at Texas A&M or other schools: DT Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy (No. 11), WR Chris Marshall (No. 24), DE Anthony Lucas (No. 32), DE Enai White (No. 38), CB Denver Harris (No. 45), and CB Smoke Bouie (No. 46).

But the friction between Saban and Fisher wasn’t just about the class, and it wasn’t just any offseason of discontent. This was the offseason when NIL officially became the unwieldy beast with no restraints.

When the NCAA threw open the doors to NIL, it did so with one rule: There are no rules. Fisher and Texas A&M took advantage of a system that was initially thought to reward current players or college transfers.

While Saban complained that the Aggies “bought every player in their (class)” when speaking to a group of business leaders in Alabama, he primarily did so to show boosters in the state that the rules of the game had dramatically changed. And that Tide boosters needed to increase financial giving.

He then added — absurdly, of course — that Alabama, “didn’t buy one player.”

Fisher lost his mind, holding a press conference and declaring that when he was growing up in West Virginia and someone called you a cheat, “the old man would slap you upside the head. Maybe someone should’ve slapped him.”

Then it got worse. Fisher said he coached with Saban, and he knew how Saban and his staff recruited players — and that someone should “look at the skeletons in his closet.”

Saban soon apologized, but the damage was done. Their relationship was broken.

So here we are, in what seems like a generation later, and Elko has transformed the roster before coaching his first game. Nearly half of the roster has been turned over, even though the season still hinges on the play of Weigman — who, had he not been injured last season, had the talent to be a difference-maker in numerous losses that eventually cost Fisher his job.

“The current alignment here from president, to athletic director, to head coach has never been stronger,” Elko said Thursday.

The reality is, those were the same words Fisher used when he was hired, when his introductory press conference was littered with talk of national championships. Those he had won or been part of, and those supposedly on the way.

Not long after making the alignment statement, Elko admitted the view inside and out of College Station comes with a sobering reminder.

“We have to stop talking about what we’re capable of,” Elko said, “And roll up our sleeves, go to work and show it.”

With or without the greatest recruiting class in college football history.

Matt Hayes

Matt Hayes is a national college football writer for Saturday Down South. You can hear him daily from 12-3 p.m. on 1010XL in Jacksonville. Follow on Twitter @MattHayesCFB