Santino Marchiol had no difficulty deciding in June that he needed to leave Texas A&M. The hard choice was how to get his football career moving as quickly as possible at the highest level possible.
A four-star linebacker who enrolled at College Station in January 2017, he was hopeful even after his redshirt season ended with Kevin Sumlin’s firing and Jimbo Fisher’s arrival. Backed by a 10-year, $75 million contract, Fisher had vowed to make a culture change that would lift the Aggies into college football’s elite.
Over the next several months, however, Marchiol said he witnessed behavior that made him uncomfortable, including, he asserts, an assistant coach giving him cash to host top recruits on"unofficial" visits. Marchiol also said he and other players were evaluated in June practice sessions that were allegedly voluntary but were operated and observed outside the NCAA rule book.
The new coaching staff arrived with a mind-set that the team was soft, Marchiol said, and demeaning and vulgar language directed at players became common. Then the training staff at Texas A&M, he claims, mishandled an ankle injury that doctors had said would require caution because of a surgery Marchiol had that sidelined him in his freshman year.
