An LSU football coaching legend has found a fresh start at Texas A&M after end with Tigers (2025)

Unemployed for the first time since he became a coach, Tommy Moffitt tried to find something else to do with his life. He spent a lot of days hunting and fishing those first few months after getting fired at LSU, tracking down deer and wild hogs. He had more time than ever without a team to train, so he relaxed as much as could.

It wasn’t long before Moffitt got bored, so he meticulously evaluated everything he had done as LSU’s strength and conditioning coach and started his own consulting business. But he missed the interactions with players and coaches. He kept himself connected, and when there was a job opening he liked, he pursued it.

“I tried everything I could possibly do to fill the void of being around the young men and the excitement of college football, and I couldn't do it,” Moffitt said. “You can only kill so many white-tailed deer and pigs and fish.”

Two years after the end of his LSU tenure, Moffitt is in his first season as the head of strength and conditioning for Texas A&M football. He spent 22 years with the Tigers, helping win three national championships, and Saturday will be his first on the opposite sideline when No. 8 LSU plays No. 14 Texas A&M.

One of Texas A&M’s staff members told Moffitt a few days ago, “Man, I bet your hair is gonna be on fire this week.” But Moffitt is trying to ignore the personal significance. He remembered the way former LSU and Alabama coach Nick Saban approached every game the same way, and still he has LSU ties. Moffitt's wife, Jill, and three sons went there. He keeps up with some people in the athletic department.

“I don't have any ill will toward anybody there,” Moffitt said. “... I'm still friends with all those people, and it's just another game, really.”

Moffitt, 61, was hired by Saban in 2000 and became a constant during LSU’s most successful era. He had worked under three different head coaches, but LSU coach Brian Kelly did not retain him. Kelly made sweeping changes as he began rebuilding the program after the 2021 season, and Moffitt was the first staff member let go.

Moffitt says he could see the end coming. LSU’s program began to crumble after winning the 2019 national championship, going 5-5 the next season. Everyone internally understood the team needed a turnaround the following year, but the Tigers lost their season opener 38-27 to UCLA.

“I figured after the UCLA game that we were not going to be retained,” Moffitt said. “I could just tell by the trajectory of the program and the direction that it was headed in that we would not be retained. I had come to grips with it before the gavel fell because of the environment and we had lost the kids.”

Though Moffitt said he “didn't like the way it happened” when he was fired, he had spent 34 years in the profession. He understood that day came for everyone, so he “wasn’t naive enough to think that I was gonna have this storybook career and not get fired at some point.” Though he hoped at the time LSU would be his last job, he felt fortunate to have stayed so long.

As he processed what happened and searched for what was next, Moffitt hunted and fished. He biked. He walked regularly too, often while talking to former colleagues. He went for a mile, then two, then three. He even added a weighted vest. Moffitt had spent years shouting on the sidelines and working with players in the weight room. He needed an outlet for his intense energy.

Pretty soon, Moffitt turned one of his son’s old bedrooms into an office. He would “sit up there all day some days” as he talked to strength coaches and poured over data. He rarely had time for an extended family vacation before, much less a detailed review of his own work. He wanted to analyze everything he had done at LSU.

His evaluation turned into a 70-page PowerPoint slideshow about his training methods, their purposes and why they worked. Moffitt traveled around the country sharing the presentation. He also made podcast appearances and even started his own, recording 56 episodes. In one of them, he interviewed his replacement at LSU, Jake Flint.

“I tried to do that so everyone could heal,” Moffitt said, “because I had already healed myself.”

After coach Mike Elko went to Texas A&M, Moffitt called him. Two of Moffitt’s former assistants worked for Elko at Duke, and they always raved about him.

Moffitt had turned down other jobs over the past two years, which he declined to specify, but this one appealed to him. He cut the slideshow to 50 pages and gave Elko a similar presentation.

“There was no pressure to get the job because if I didn't get the job,” Moffitt said, “I was gonna go right back to hunting and kill some more deer.”

Elko liked Moffitt’s accomplishments and philosophy.

“You maybe expect it to be a little bit old school,” Elko said. “And then the first time you sit down and you talk to him, you realize how well educated he is in the sports science field, how modern he is, how up to date he is with everything. What he's doing from a training standpoint is really on the cutting edge.”

Parts of the job have been tough. Moffitt’s wife and their sons live in Baton Rouge. They visit him in College Station, but he usually comes home to an empty house. He misses them, his dog and their weekly family meals. On Monday night, he ate chicken noodle soup, pimento cheese and crackers for dinner.

But Moffitt is doing what he loves again. He called the chance to coach somewhere else “a gift” because it has let him experience a different place. He gets to help mold a new team and interact with players, his favorite part of the work. As much as he loves hunting and fishing, that never fulfilled him the same way.

“Nothing that I found filled the void of the excitement of being in a collegiate weight room,” Moffitt said. “It's what I was, I guess, put on this earth to do.”