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SL Xpress

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SL Xpress last won the day on August 7 2021

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  1. We need to step away from the jump to conclusions mat. There is no way to accurately speculate what the future is going to bring other than it's going to be very different than what it is now. Acting is if this is the final form of college sports - and college football specifically - and even more specifically, college football recruiting - is silly. Eventually there will be some kind of federal legislation, because that's the only avenue that can bring some resemblance of stability. Until then the whole ecosystem is going to be whipsawed from one direction into another based on the most recent court cases/settlements, new state laws passed to give the local programs a competitive advantage, and how different programs find ways around various restrictions. But acting like what has been going on the last few weeks is a harbinger of what the future will look like is silly. At the end of the day any sales pitch needs the opportunity to get your foot in the door. Relationships still matter. They always will. Success on the gridiron will make a difference. But when we're talking about millions of dollars being thrown around for individual players, of course that's going to often trump how many playoff appearances, NFL draft picks, or individual accolades are being earned. But it doesn't mean they don't matter at all.
  2. It wasn't just the high school knock on him. That was the knock on him early in his college career, too. But with Casey Hampton as his teammate, that wasn't going to cut it. To Shaun Rogers' credit, he got on board with Hampton, and they turned into one of the most fearsome duo of DTs we've ever had, which is an extremely high bar, frankly.
  3. I root against everyone who had a chance to go to Texas but chose to go elsewhere regardless of the reasons. It’s different when they didn’t get the opportunity, but I enjoy being petty. There’s a lot of making fun of the 9.95ers on this thread, but I feel like I’ve been steered correctly on my expectations for pretty much every recruitment this cycle outside of maybe KJ Edwards. I know some people are disgruntled because we apparently led at some point with a lot of targets, but once the bigger NIL deals started rolling in the 9.95ers adjusted accordingly. Him declaring for Oregon surprised no one who follows On Texas Football.
  4. So…Garrett Gilbert.
  5. That's fanciful. First of all, Akers shouldn't have sent Curry out there in the first place. Just send out the regular punt team. They'd never practiced it. Akers put Curry in a position to fail, and that's all there is to it. Secondly, Texas was going down to mediocrity whether Akers won the championship or not. That '83 team was ridiculously loaded. But the recruiting behind that team had already been eroded. Third, Akers wasn't that good of a recruiter. He recruited well in spite of himself. He would regularly slow play players, telling his staff, "you got to make them want it." He was terrible with African American families. Completely tone deaf. The staff would prep families for his in home visit, telling them what he'd say before he'd say it so they could just nod their head at how ridiculous he sounded rather than get offended. Also, I don't know what you mean by a panic hire. The athletic department was poor at the time. Deloss Dodds wisely took a back seat regarding the head football coaching hire because he didn't want that to be a part of how he was measured for doing his job. If he just took marching orders on that hire he could go back to fundraising and make that what he was measured by. There's also no way the state legislature was going to let Texas go anywhere without A&M, Baylor, and Texas Tech. Not without paying the price of opening up the PUF to all state schools, which wasn't ever an option.
  6. That's the intent of the House settlement. It's unclear how it will be enforced. We know some of the mechanisms. We do not know how effective they will be. We can also surmise it will be tested by programs seeking a competitive advantage. In addition the House settlement has multiple legal challenges it will have to face. Also, there are other legal challenges to the NCAA that were not covered by the House settlement. The Texas One Fund has said they will retain independence from the athletic department, even though donations go towards Longhorn Foundation points. They have now pivoted to creating partnerships with local businesses for NIL opportunities to be given to Texas student athletes, rather than asking for charitable work. I don't have a clue how any of that works, but that's what they've said.
  7. I think a big part of the point of spending $1 million on a softball pitcher was the message "if you're good enough, we're willing to blow our budget on you, too, so come to us and let's make a deal." It's unclear just how much of their wealth the Double Eagle guys are willing to invest in the football program specifically, and the athletic program in general, but it's obviously quite a bit. And unlike Phil Knight or T. Boone Pickens, they're pretty young. As far as declining enrollment, a good way to reverse that is to field a good football team. It's hard for me to envision Tech becoming a new Miami of the 80s through early 2000s. Or the SMU of the early 80s. But they could be like A&M under Sherrill and Slocum. Dominate their conference with no top 5 finishes. Look at what a golden age Aggie fans think of that as.
  8. It's really two guys. John Sellers and Cody Campbell. They both played football at Texas Tech. They were partners with Double Eagle. They're the guys who brought in the softball pitcher, NiJaree Canady, from Stanford, for $1 mlllion per year both last year and this coming season.
  9. All I can say is that I predict the numbers keep going up until there's some kind of legislation or the system starts collapsing. Maybe this new enforcement mechanism does something to curtail the spending, but I doubt it. Texas isn't going to ruin college football any more than it ruined the Southwest Conference or the Big 12. But I feel like you know that. In any case, I did miss the point of the post. I do feel like Texas Tech can spend its way to relevancy if they have the right coach. I have no idea if McGuire is that sort of dude, but if you spend enough more than everyone else year after year, eventually it comes together. That's assuming the Double Eagle guys continue to believe this is a good use of their immense wealth. And it assumes other programs don't get their own very generous benefactors and outspend them. But that goes back to my first sentence.
  10. I think the amount of outrage could easily be exaggerated. Most people find it remarkably easy to spend someone else's money.
  11. Yeah, this is a good slump buster. Excited to have him.
  12. The school is signing NIL deals with athletes. It's still NIL. The terminology is confusing.
  13. Lol. It did suck. So did 1984-1997. Mack Brown got lazy. Charlie Strong and Tom Herman were terrible hires. The worst thing that could have happened is that Texas brings more talent in to waste on those bozos. Yes, it sucked, but maybe we had to go through all that to get to where we are now.
  14. A handful. Beyond all that, rules are being broken. Rules are going to be broken. And then how it's dealt with will determine how well the House settlement holds up in the short term. In the long term there's going to be some other dynamic in place because there are going to be more lawsuits, more settlements, more judgements, and then eventually, some sort of federal legislation. I'm not terribly concerned about Texas. We'll be fine.
  15. Yeah, the terminology gets awkward. There's a $20.5 million cap on NIL provided by the schools. There's no cap on third party NIL, but all deals over $600 are supposed to go through a clearinghouse that determines if they're legitimate. If the NIL deal is determined not to be a market rate NIL deal based on an algorithm, the deal is supposed to be blown up. Right now Texas is deciding on an administrative level to not do booster led NIL deals for the 2026 class. So they're counting on the $15 million or so out of the $20.5 million allotment the school has put forward specifically for football, plus whatever NIL deals the metro area of Austin can produce for local athletes - plus whatever national brands want to get on board - to compensate athletes. Other schools don't seem to be following the same formula, so for the 2026 class other programs appear to have more money to throw at athletes than Texas does. That's a bit of a question, but that's the appearance. Like I've said multiple times, the ink isn't dry on the House settlement, so we'll have to see how it all works out. But I can say that if Texas abides by this, and other schools choose to add more booster led NIL deals, then Texas isn't going to just have a tough time recruiting in football. They'll have a tough time recruiting in any sport where booster led initiatives are being used to acquire talent. That will become very obvious very quickly. I just don't see how Texas allows that as a long term situation. But the House settlement is not college sports' final form. Not by a long shot. We are in a phase of complete chaos, where the rules will change regularly, and programs that value winning will have to constantly adapt.
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