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Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
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. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
I think the amount of outrage could easily be exaggerated. Most people find it remarkably easy to spend someone else's money. -
Yeah, this is a good slump buster. Excited to have him.
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Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
The school is signing NIL deals with athletes. It's still NIL. The terminology is confusing. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
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. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
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. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
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. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
That is not what is going on. It's more like a cap has recently been instituted, with no clear enforcement mechanism, and no clear punishments if a team goes over the cap, so some programs are trying to abide by the cap, and others aren't. It's basically very similar to pre 2017 except with a higher floor for wages for student athletes. If you want to ignore the rules and spend up to the limit that your boosters will spend above the $20.5 million provided by the athletic department, then go ahead. And we'll see if these enforcement mechanisms have any teeth or not. We're extremely early in this iteration of recruiting, so we'll see how Texas responds over time. There's not a need to rush to action simply because people are panicking on message boards. The roster is in great shape. The signing period isn't until December. Let's see what happens. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
The only problem with that is the NIL money from Cody Campbell types is front loaded, whereas Dr. Pepper commercials are potentially there, but speculative. I read an article recently about the Zuckerberg-Chan Foundation pulling out of financing an East Palo Alto private school: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative plans to shut down East Palo Alto school The moral of the story according to many witnesses is be wary of entrusting your endeavors to one donor because they may cease funding, and then you cease to exist. Same is true for Texas Tech and Oregon. Oklahoma State was helped immensely by T. Boone Pickens who singlehandedly helped make OSU athletics more competitive with the rest of the Big 12. Then when he died, those donations dried up for the most part. The great thing about Texas is there's a deep bench. It's not an unlimited bench, but it's not one benefactor the way it is with other places. I feel confident Texas is in a good place whatever the future of college athletics ends up being. But like Littlefinger reminds us, chaos is a ladder. SMU is now in the Power 4, and made the college football playoffs last year. Texas Tech made it to the championship game in softball. There are a lot of places that are going to go all in at least in the short term to see if they can rise up the ladder. Some of that is absolutely unsustainable. But if they see some short term success it incentivizes another wave of programs to try to do something similar, or if they have deep enough pockets, they keep raising the ante in an effort to see how far up the ladder they can go. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Also they're using third party NIL money and daring the new enforcement mechanisms to do their job either by not reporting it or reporting it and seeing what happens. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Well, any summary of the House settlement is going to be inadequate, because a) it's a summary b) there are unintended consequences, some of which can be foreseen, and some it of which cannot. College football is in something of an existential crisis. How can that be, SL Xpress? It's never been more popular! The ratings are through the roof. There's more money pouring in than ever before! Sure, then a disruption happens, and suddenly we see the cracks in retrospect that were always there previously. College football has lost control of their labor costs. Over the past 30 years there has been a meteoric rise in salaries among coaches and administrators. There have been facility funding wars. But a lot of that was possible because of the artificial suppression of wages for the players, set at the cost of a scholarship, and then amended over the years to some cost of living and travel expense allowances that didn't even approach the market value of talented players. There has always been a black market since college football became a thing, that grew exponentially after WWII with black market trend setter OU. Saban and others brought around another era which saw the amount given to everyone associated with talented players - including the players themselves, but not exclusively - rise extensively, but since it was a black market, it didn't come close to what their real market value is. The thing is, college football wages are not tied to profit/loss statements. Businesses can overpay their labor force, until they go out of business or are purchased by someone else because they're no longer competitive. Like someone told me, the numbers don't matter until they matter. For most businesses layoffs occur prior to that because they're not growing enough or they're losing money. But for college football players, they're insulated from those dynamics somewhat because their market value is determined by the ego of wealthy boosters, not by profit/loss statements. That hasn't changed. The House settlement didn't change that. It's put up some parameters to try to help keep the labor costs from spiraling out of control, but the market is going to do what the market is going to do. Just because someone sets up some boundaries, doesn't mean those boundaries are going to be respected. To have people respect boundaries - and this is in any setting, not just football - there better be some consequences for going off the rails. The more severe the consequences, the more effective the boundaries will be. What are the consequences for not abiding by the House settlement? Nobody knows. Until that's clear, plenty of groups are going to test things. Which is what we're seeing. Texas is not going to be one of those. Texas sees that the labor market for college football players is unsustainable, so while Texas has a competitive advantage in that landscape, it's not good for the sport as a whole, so they're taking a disciplined approach so far and trying to abide by the letter of the House settlement. At least right now. Here's the dirty secret. None of the key decision makers in college football think the House settlement is any kind of answer. They're not fools. That's why the Big Ten and SEC commissioners were in Washington trying to get a bill passed. That's why the Notre Dame AD went golfing with Trump. What they're hoping is that the House settlement shows lawmakers they're trying, but the message to them is "we need legal help from the federal government." Which is a scary phrase to utter, but in this case it's true. There's no mechanism which will allow college football to govern itself effectively. Whatever they try to do will end up in court and be struck down due to antitrust, Title IX, or the issue of players not being classified as employees. Like the movie Wargames "the only real choice is to not play the game," but I think we can all agree none of us want to see Texas opt out of college football a la Ivy League style. As far as this recruiting cycle the dynamics have changed, just like they changed when the Alston decision was first handed down. It will continue to change and evolve. closetojumping has the best post I've seen on the subject, and he's as close to a subject matter expert as we have on this board. Here's the link to his post for anyone who didn't see it on the previous page: So we're just going to have to wait and see. We have a great roster right now. UT's response to this new environment is going to continue to evolve, but we have a chairman of the board of regents and an AD who are on the same page with this stuff. We didn't make the decision to join the SEC just to turn into Vanderbilt. I feel highly confident Texas is going to come out of all of this A-OK. But in the short term there's going to be some rough patches. That's what we're seeing right now. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Do they? Do they? The Meme That Hilariously Won't Die: Craig James Killed Five Hookers at SMU - D Magazine -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
That actually isn't true. Also, SMU deserved it. The misplaced sympathy around that program in modern times is nauseating. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Yes. I've said Ohio State had a payroll of $25 million often. Which isn't $20 million. Oregon was around $20 million last year. I do not know what their payroll is going to be this year, though. They are building a brand new start of the art sports complex exclusively for the football program. Just started construction on it. So it's not like they're pulling back. I have talked to no one who has verified the $35-40 million from Bohls until now, but if you say the number is correct, I believe you. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
What's hilarious is if they try to pass enforcement off to the conferences, which it appears is one of the strategies to avoid antitrust. Yes, the Big 10 and the SEC are going to bring the hammer to Ohio State and Georgia respectively. That's going to happen. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
When you say afraid, I'm not sure what you mean. The House settlement is absolutely designed to help cap NIL wages, particularly wages through collectives that weren't ever designed to be legitimate marketing NILs, but are pretty much poorly disguised pay for play. If they're disguised at all. I also think the settlement cap is doomed to fail, but that's absolutely the intent. And the party line right now is that schools are going to abide by that. There's not even accurate reporting going on about how much is being spent. Ohio State did not have a payroll of $20 million last year. But because Bjork said it as an offhand remark, that's what people have gone with as if he wrote it on stone tablets as he came down from Mt. Sinai. Then you have Bohls throwing out $35-40 million as the payroll for Texas this year, and every swinging dick is quoting "the Houston Chronicle says UT will pay its roster $35-40 million in 2025." Because that's how it works. It's not about the truth. It's about what you can put in print without getting in trouble. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Well, I feel like I said it would. We're going to stick to the cap - at least in the short term - but the idea that other college programs across the country were, is and was always ridiculous. That's not how markets work. That's not how human behavior works. You get a small cabal, sure. A small group can stick to their guns. But you get as many separate entities (with their own herd of wealthy cats to manage) as there are in college football, there's no chance they're able to stick to some kind of artificial ceiling on wages. Then it's the way it's always been. There's a bar in Buffalo, NY - or at least there used to be - called Breaking the Seal. They'd have happy hours where drinks were discounted right up to the time someone had to go to the bathroom. Not sure exactly how the rules worked. But of course once that first person goes, everyone goes. That's how this stuff is going to be. Once it's obvious that first program goes over the cap, a bunch of other schools are going to do it. Then we see how the enforcement works. Is there any punishment? How is guilt determined? How quickly is punishment administered? How painful is it? An example is going to have to be set. If no example is set in a somewhat timely period I hope as an institution we acknowledge that. There are all kinds of behaviors the administration turns a blind eye to because that's simply the price of doing business. I have confidence that's how it will be here. But again, it's now July 1. The House settlement just came down. We're halfway through the recruiting cycle. The ink isn't even dry on the settlement. There's a long ways to go. Jumping to conclusions because of a week of hard knocks on guys we never led on, with seemingly bad news to come for a few guys, is not the way to go, IMO. Let's see how it plays out at least through this recruiting cycle. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Ha! I won a bunch of high school debates with that argument. Back in the early 80s high school kids weren't ready to make counter arguments. Made one girl break down in tears. The amount of spending on college athletes is entirely dependent on how much ego wealthy alums have tied up in seeing their alma mater be successful. Or in the case of Larry Ellison, apparently his wife's alma mater. Texas isn't going to be able to force other schools to spend money they don't have unless the enforcement arm of the House settlement is actually effective. My bet is that it's not effective for any number of reasons and the spending cap becomes a mirage. It will be interesting to see how schools like Texas respond. Right now the sales pitch is you can make more in Austin with legitimate NILs than you can anywhere else because of the size of the city and no sports team, plus the Longhorn national brand. I'm not saying that's wrong, but if an extremely wealthy person from another school wants to spend a decent portion of their wealth on college athletics, that's going to trump Austin's potential NIL market. But maybe the House settlement sticks. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
My biggest short term fear is that Texas toes the line with the spending cap while other programs do not, waiting for the enforcement arm to make an example of someone. If that doesn't happen, or if the example is a slap on the wrist, I hope Texas is competitive with the prevailing salary structure to the extent they can still pursue national championships. But it's all so early now. No reason to hyperventilate at this point. But someone is not going to heed the House settlement caps in some way, and that someone isn't likely to be Texas. So we'll see what happens from there. -
Bill Yeoman should get more credit for the triple option with his veer than he does.
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Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Wrong about what? We (as in me) are comparing the Gulf Coast to Lake Michigan. I'm not wrong about that comparison at all. However, it's not going to be a factor, so there is that. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
The only reason to be negative about recruiting or the state of the program right now is because you view life with the worst of expectations to psychologically protect yourself from disappointment, or you’re a troll who likes to wind people up. Or you’re just ignorant and lack any sort of perspective. The reason to follow recruiting closely for me is in part so I have some sort of realistic expectation for our chances of landing some of these kids. There’s not a single target that’s gone a different path than Texas that I’m surprised by. Part of that is because I probably follow recruiting a little too obsessively, but for anyone posting regularly on this thread, that describes you, too. The KJ Edwards commitment felt like it came out of nowhere. The rest of them I felt like I had a good idea they were going to go the way they went. Texas is in great shape. I have followed Texas recruiting in times where the head coach was so scared of rejection, and loved to brag how often he hit on all his targets, that he was scared to death of going after prospects where the chances of landing them was 50/50. These guys have their big boy pants on. Plus, in an era where football recruiting is more transactional than it ever has been, if the budget isn’t there for a player, it’s going to impact our chances considerably. I recently asked a guy in the industry how often Texas loses a recruitment where UT is the highest bidder, and he said in his estimation it was about 1 out of 10. We’re still in June. We have a great recruiting class forming. We have more studs ready to commit. We rarely lose flips to other schools (although we’re not invulnerable to it). We regularly flip kids from other schools to Texas. How the season unfolds will create more opportunities in recruiting. The class we sign in December is going to be outstanding. We’re in a good place right now. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
I don’t understand making this comparison. You’re comparing OOS signees in previous classes to a class that still has months to go. Also, when I think of the change in recruiting, I’m not thinking about how many are being signed. I’m thinking about how many are being brought in on official visits. The difference between national recruiting versus in state recruiting is that traditionally we could expect to hit at a much higher rate of our instate targets, all other things being equal. All things were not equal quite often, but nonetheless over a long enough period of time Texas did quite well with instate recruiting. I don’t personally have a good grasp on how transactional football recruiting is these days. I know it’s a huge factor, but how often is Texas losing recruiting battles when we’re the highest bidder? I question whether anyone has good data on that. Someone deep on the inside could make some guesses, but a lot of that is proprietary information that agents and other programs have a lot of agendas that dissuade them from being completely authentic, just as I’m sure the bidding on UT’s part isn’t exactly going to be an open book. But regardless of how many out of state players Texas signs, there’s still been a sea change in the effort being put into national recruiting. That’s seen in the number of offers, and the number of official visits, especially when comparing the ratio of out of state versus in state in this year versus the history of Texas recruiting. It’s a massive difference this year. It’s also seen in how often the staff is visiting out of state high schools. I have no idea how to measure that. I just know I’ve never seen the Texas staff make this many visits to out of state high schools in my lifetime. That kind of effort isn’t about the current recruiting class. That’s a systemic shift meant to signal to the rest of the country, Texas is interested in your players, whether that’s a message being sent to players, high school coaches, trainers, or agents. In years past a different message would be sent by national recruiting efforts. If you’re not from Texas, you better be really talented at a position of need that we can’t fill adequately in state, or you better love Texas so much for whatever reason that there’s already a good shot you’re going to say yes if Texas recruits you. That is not what is going on now. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
At some point you need to pull the trigger on bodies. You don't want to miss in your evaluation. But it's a problem to have too few, too. I guess with the portal there's always that path, but we haven't gone that route yet. But one of the primary issues at Texas between Mackovic and Flood was not having enough bodies. We're going to be entering that territory again soon. I know I sound like I'm veering towards alarmist, but I don't feel that way. I feel like they're going to address it by December and I'm interested to see what that path looks like. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
I don't know. The last 3 years have been pretty awesome. I'm a lot more calm this year than I was last year. I figure everything is going to work out just fine. No reason to go into conniptions in June - or bask in recruiting glory, either. I'd rather they say yes to us than yes to someone else, but it's all going to work out either way. I know this. There's not another program fans of other teams in college football dread going against in recruiting more than Texas. Not that they can't win any of the battles, but right now we be scary.
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