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When Jimbo Fisher took over Texas A&M before the 2018 season, administrators famously gave him a national championship plaque with the date left blank.
The Aggies are still waiting.
Their 3-3 start this season has effectively eliminated them from the College Football Playoff picture despite having one of college footballās most expensive rosters and highest-paid coaches (Fisherās successor, Mike Elko), and a top-10 preseason ranking.
Another season of squandered potential leads to a question sure to inspire thoughtful debate on TexAgs: Is Texas A&M college footballās biggest historical underachiever, or does someone else have a better claim?
To find out, The Athletic crunched two sets of numbers for teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision. We gauged a programās potential using:
⢠Finances (two decades of athletic revenue, as reported to the U.S. Department of Education)
⢠Proximity to talent (how many NFL players were born in the state)
⢠Talent acquisition (how many NFL Draft picks a school has produced in the common era)
⢠Fanbase size (stadium capacity)
We then weighed those factors against a programās success: winning percentage, conference championships, top-25 finishes and national titles in the Associated Press poll era (since 1936). We also looked at how many times a program went from preseason Top 25 to unranked.
Who are the biggest underachievers in college football?