Jimbo Fisher had a small confession to make from the ACC Football Kickoff stage at the Hilton Uptown this week.
Fisher — who won the final BCS National Championship at Florida State in 2014 and coached Texas A&M from 2018 to 2023 — is quietly a Georgia football fan.
“No doubt,” Fisher told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday during a break from his ACC Network duties. “It’s because I root for Josh Brooks in everything he does.”
That sounds odd until you know the history. Brooks, now in his sixth year as Georgia’s athletic director, learned under Fisher back at LSU, where he worked as an equipment manager and student assistant. Fisher was the Tigers’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Nick Saban from 2000 to 2004 and Les Miles from 2005 to 2006, overlapping with Brooks’ undergrad years from 1998 to 2002.
“When Nick Saban and Jimbo showed up, it only took a week for me to realize how different things were going to be,” Brooks told the AJC. “Reflecting back, that time in my life gave me confidence later to recognize and know the difference in coaches, and it created a standard.”
Fisher remembers Brooks as a young man who was locked in from the start.
“Josh said then he wanted to be a coach, and he sat in every meeting I had — he’d get all his other stuff done before the meeting and have the field ready for us — but he’d come in with a notebook and take notes on everything, and he never missed a meeting.”
Brooks eventually chose the administrative path, taking a job as director of football operations at Louisiana-Monroe in 2004 before Mark Richt brought him to Georgia as assistant director of football operations. Fisher later tried to hire Brooks at Florida State, but then-Georgia AD Greg McGarity did what he had to do to keep Brooks in Athens.
Fisher knew even then what Georgia had.
“Josh Brooks is one of the keys to Georgia,” Fisher said. “Kirby Smart does a great job, but Josh is a huge part of that. I’m going to tell you why: He came from the ground up.
“When you’re an athletic director, you’re touching all bases, and that’s why he has such a broad picture and very keen view of things. There’s not a better guy and better AD in college football right now than Josh Brooks.”
Fisher is also convinced Brooks could have made it as a coach had he gone that direction.
“He knew the Xs and Os and could have been a coach in a heartbeat, and he was going to be, but there were some (administrative) opportunities out there, too,” Fisher said. “I told him he’d be good there, too, and so he looked into it; we were very close in that way.”
Brooks, for his part, credits Fisher with teaching him how to spot and evaluate good coaches.
“I learned coaches can be demanding and tough, and hold you accountable, but treat you well at the same time,” Brooks said. “It was a good balance of learning how to get chewed out, but then (Fisher) would give you that wink when you needed it.”
He also made sure to vouch for Fisher’s football mind.
“Don’t let his West Virginia accent fool you; anyone who has worked with Jimbo knows the man is a genius when it comes to offensive game plans,” said Brooks, who spent time in the coaching box at LSU while Fisher called plays. “People underestimate the intricacies of football and the chess match that it is, and (Fisher) was playing chess when a lot of people were playing checkers.”
