This is, in fact, real life. After days of increasingly tenuous speculation, Jimbo Fisher will indeed leave the Florida State Seminoles after eight seasons to become the next head football coach for the Texas A&M Aggies. Fisher comes to College Station as the most accomplished head coach the Aggies have ever hired, with six 10-win seasons during his time in Tallahassee, including three ACC titles, a College Football Playoff appearance and a BCS National Championship.

Fisher will reportedly receive a 10-year, $75 million contract that is fully guaranteed - the richest contract in college football history. This comes less than one year after Fisher signed a contract extension with Florida State that guaranteed him $44 million to coach through the 2024 season.

In addition to his job resurrecting the Florida State program following Bobby Bowden’s retirement, Fisher also has a wealth of experience in the SEC. He served as quarterbacks coach at Auburn from 1993-1998 and was the quarterbacks coach/offensive coordinator for Nick Saban at LSU from 2000-2006, which included a 2003 national championship team.

You’ll no doubt see a lot of people taking this opportunity to poke holes in Fisher’s resume. He only won big with Jameis Winston, the 2017 season was a red flag, etc. The bottom line is that coaching hires are always crap-shoots. Nobody ever knows if the next guy will be any better than the last. All you can do is go out and try to find the best man for the job and hope for the best. Damned if Texas A&M and didn’t go out and exceed everyone’s expectations with this hire. When the talk going in is about hiring coaches like SMU’s Chad Morris, UCF’s Scott Frost, or coordinator’s like Clemson’s DC Brent Venables, hiring a coach like Fisher away from a place where he won a national title can be considered nothing but an unmitigated success. There will be a lot of speculation about Fisher’s motivation to leave Florida State for Texas A&M, but for Aggie fans, none of it really matters anymore, because he is here.

Fisher will have to hit the ground running, with college football’s first ever early signing period mere weeks away. And as he tries to assuage the Aggies’ current recruits, as well as attract others, wearing that championship ring on his finger speaks for itself.

Welcome, coach!