Football fans’ jaws hit the floor on Thursday when Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher fired back at his old boss, Nick Saban, for saying, among other things, that A&M had “bought” its entire 2022 recruiting class.

Just as shocked were current and former SEC coaches.

“I’m speechless first time in my life,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin told The Athletic. “I kept saying, ‘This can’t really be happening. Is this real life?’ I still haven’t moved from my seat. Should of been on Pay-Per-View.”

Fisher, who won a national championship at Florida State, is the only former Saban assistant who has defeated his mentor head to head. But A&M’s 41-38 stunning upset as 17 1/2-point underdogs last season was mild compared to watching two SEC heavyweights sling massive amounts of mud at each other and their programs.

“It’s despicable that a reputable head coach can come out and say this when he doesn’t get his way or things don’t go his way,” Fisher said. “The narcissist in him doesn’t allow this things to happen and it’s ridiculous when he’s not on top.”

“Some people think they’re God,” he added. “Go dig into how God did his deal, you may find out about a lot of things that you don’t want to know. We build him up to be the czar of college football. Go dig into his past.”

One former SEC coach who spent time around Saban and Fisher when they coached together at LSU in the early 2000s said Fisher telling the world to look into Saban’s past with “that eye roll was something I would have never expected in a billion years. It was oddly satisfying as someone who lived on that planet with them and also incredibly sad that those two have come to that.