Texas A&M finished the 2020 season with its highest ranking in the AP poll since 1939, and it seems that has emboldened coach Jimbo Fisher as he prepares for his fourth season with the program. The Aggies coach playfully told the Touchdown Club of Houston this week that A&M is going to beat Alabama coach Nick Saban's butt while Saban is still coach of the Crimson Tide.

Fisher, who worked on Saban's staff at LSU from 2000-04, used a different word for butt, and though the quip drew laughs from the audience, it got back to his old boss and his current SEC West rival pretty quickly.

Asked about the remark on Thursday and if he had any response, Saban actually had a question.

"In golf?" he said. Told that Fisher apparently meant he planned to beat Saban's rear in football, the 69-year-old legend with an undefeated record against his former assistants didn't seem too worried.

"I'm sure there will come a day," Saban said. "Is that what he was talking about? Football?"

Fisher made sure his audience in Houston understood his respect for Saban after the shock of his initial comment and added that the two West Virginia natives are going to a fundraiser together later this month. In his response, Saban reminisced on when they used to play basketball together as coworkers.

"I guess we're no longer partners when it comes to that," Saban said.

Texas A&M finished 9-1 and ranked No. 4 in the AP poll in 2020, but its lone loss was a 52-24 blowout at the hands of an Alabama team that finished 13-0 as the program claimed its sixth national title under Saban. The Crimson Tide have outscored Texas A&M 144-75 in three games since Fisher took over the program.

"I respect everything they do and how they do it, but we can do it just as good and be just as good or better, and we will," Fisher told the Touchdown Club of Houston. "That's what our goal is and what I want. So we're going to get there."