
SL Xpress
Full Members-
Posts
4879 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Downloads
Recruiting - 2020
2019-2020 Football Season
Football
Entertainment
Sports
News and Business
Cloak Room
Transfer Portal
Recruiting
Events
Everything posted by SL Xpress
-
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Are you not entertained?!? -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Gerry was saying he didn't think there's a way Texas would get all of Lee, Ojo, and Turntine, but they need to get at least two of them to make this a great OL class. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Except for worrying about holding on to the ones we've got, and hoping to flip the ones we don't. But you did say "some". -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
So what? Orgeron, Chizik, and Coker were all bad head coaching hires. Yes, they won national championships, but that doesn't make them a good hire. Charlie Strong and Tom Herman were bad coaching hires, but they didn't win national championships. Miami has never had any sustained success after Coker's first 3 seasons. Mentioning Orgeron and Miles in the same sentence is laughable. I'm not a huge Les Miles fan, but the guy could coach circles around Orgeron in terms of how to run a program. He's a bit of a clown, but neither he nor Fisher are in the same class as the others you mentioned. Switzer was a great college head football coach. I mean, Satan is a great head of the land of eternal damnation, so I'm not exactly trying to stick up for the guy. But putting him in this category is completely ignoring how well he ran the OU program, even if he is a lying, cheating, amoral son of a bitch. And the problem with the Dallas Cowboys isn't their head coach anyway. No one is going to be able to succeed there under the current ownership. IMO including Switzer is a complete non sequitur if we're going to discuss Mack Brown's impact on Texas football for the decade after he left. I find blaming Mack Brown for how bare he left the cupboard as the source of UT's ills following his departure as silly. As Sarkisian has said plenty of times, when he came to Texas the problem wasn't the talent. It was the culture. Not that the talent couldn't be upgraded, and he has, but the culture was terrible. Neither Charlie Strong nor Tom Herman knew how to build a program for sustained success. Neither do Orgeron, Chizik, or Coker, even though those 3 won national championships. Fisher and Miles aren't necessarily wizards at it, but they at least showed some sustained success with their own players over a long enough period of time I don't like including them in this list. At this point I'm convinced Sarkisian does. And he's been given the tools to succeed. I don't know if Sarkisian would have been this successful if the current version of Sarkisian could have been hired instead of Charlie Strong. This version wasn't available then anyway. He still had more fuck ups to go through. But I think he would have been. -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
I'm unconvinced Jimbo Fisher or Les Miles are bad coaches. I don't think either of them are "great" coaches. But you can't seriously put them in the same category as Charlie Strong and Tom Herman. I would put Lloyd Carr and Phil Fulmer in that category as well, since we seem to be limiting it to national championship winning coaches. Then there's Gene Chizik with the Cam Newton effect. Larry Coker I agree with. -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about. Sure, very talented teams win in spite of shitty coaching. But programs don't succeed year after year unless the coach has something going for him. Larry Coker won a national championship with one of the best college football teams of all time. He finished in the top 5 his first 3 years as a coach. Does that make him a great coach? What I'm saying is that Charlie Strong and Tom Herman wouldn't have ultimately succeeded at Texas regardless of the talent level they inherited. They were bad coaching hires. If anything, I'm grateful both of their tenures were as short as they were. The last thing I'd wish for us as a fan base is to put up with more years with either Charlie Strong or Tom Herman because they inherited more talent. From that perspective Mack Brown did us a favor. Blaming Mack Brown for what transpired after him is missing the mark, IMO. Other than cock blocking us from hiring Saban. That I absolutely blame him for. Him and Joe Jamail and Deloss Dodds, among others. So that counts, if we want to go that route. -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
That's not what sets a program up for failure for a decade. Charlie Strong was handed a Cadillac from head coach Willie Taggart at USF and went 10-2 in his first year. Then he went 7-6 and 4-8 and was fired. Someone convince me Charlie Strong would have had different results if he'd been handed a more talented team at Texas. Go ahead. The problem wasn't Mack Brown. The problem was Charlie Strong. He was a bad hire. So was Tom Herman. Unless Mack Brown had some input into those hires, he's not responsible for their failures. It doesn't matter the talent on the team. A coach who is a poor fit is going to have poor results regardless of any other factor. A great coach who is a great fit is going to get great results regardless of the handicaps. You have to hire the right coach. That's the most important thing. The second most important thing is being able to keep him once you find him. -
Texas A&M Recruiting 2026: The World's Drunkest Elk
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
A&M beats Texas on another one! Oh my gosh! What are we going to do? I hope our OL class turns out okay! Maybe Krempin scares Turntine off from A&M. I sure hope so! Otherwise we have no chance against this mighty recruiting juggernaut Elko is building. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Perhaps you're not aware of the dimensions of the average Samoan? -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
BTW, Corpus Christi is an hour closer to Austin than Galveston is. So there. Not that Corpus Christi is exactly paradise or will remind anyone of Hawaii, either, but the water isn't brown. -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
Well, any coaching weakness other than having Vince Young take a direct snap under center and try to alter his throwing motion. That was a pretty big coaching weakness. He might have won the national championship in 2004 if not for that. -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
Not really. He had no say in the hiring of Charlie Strong or Tom Herman. Those guys were going to fail regardless. That's not on Mack Brown. Unless you're saying he's the reason Saban wasn't able to take the job. Because while he wasn't the only reason, he was the biggest. -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
And then he acted like he'd solved college football. He got lazy on the recruiting trail. He refused to give high school assistants gas money to bring their players to Austin at a time when other schools were paying them $500 to $1000. Never mind trainers and other hanger ons. He wouldn't let his assistants leave the Austin area during the football season, so the only high schools they could visit were in the Hill Country, when all the talent is in DFW and Houston. He told Muschamp he was stepping down after the 2009 season and then didn't. He cock blocked Saban, making sure he didn't resign until after Saban signed the contract for Alabama that had been sitting on his desk unsigned. At a time when programs were first starting to pay players and their families for unlimited "unofficial" visits Mack refused to extend any offers until summer camps. Then he'd take early bread as part of his strategy to build momentum. Then he'd take bread at the end of the recruiting cycle because he'd already lost on a lot of top targets. Then the recruiting services would overrate the players Texas was taking because of the name. You give him credit for the national championship. Heck, he came close to winning two if not for Colt's injury. But the truth is he and Greg Davis almost successfully ruined Vince Young by trying to alter his throwing motion and have him line up under center virtually every snap. It wasn't until after the Missouri game in 2004 - after that embarrassing shutout to OU - and the uninspired play versus the Tigers, that Ray Seals, VY's high school coach, came to Austin and read Mack Brown the riot act for not putting VY in the shotgun and running zone read. So yes, Mack Brown gets the credit. He should. But in many ways he succeeded in spite of himself. The real credit from me isn't the national championship or the 10 win seasons or the bowl victories. It was rescuing Texas football from an institutional apathy. Because I'm not sure someone other than Mack Brown and his particular set of gifts could have done it nearly as well. This was a guy who convinced the North Carolina faithful to pony up for what at the time was the Taj Mahal of athletic centers, at North Carolina of all places, while he was going 1-10 for two consecutive seasons to start his tenure. There is no question the guy could sell ice to the Eskimos.- 3811 replies
-
- 21
-
-
-
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
No one compared Hawaii to Galveston. I compared the Gulf Coast to Lake Michigan. And I wasn't thinking of Galveston when I said that. -
Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Football
He's complicated. In some ways he was the savior of the program, and then he lived long enough to become the villain. He should have stepped down after 2009. The only problem with that is we might have hired him back like North Carolina did. At least we got as clean a break from him as is possible under the circumstances. I know he's vulturing around now, but he's not the head coach. That would have been an even bigger disaster than 2010-13.- 3811 replies
-
- 11
-
-
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Well, better and worse. George Mitchell is the one who should get the credit for turning it around. That guy was instrumental in the development of The Woodlands, revitalizing Galveston, and the development of fracking. For a normal person any one of those would have been plenty to hang their hat on. But my sadness upon his death mostly revolved around Galveston. They used to say Galveston was all about the three Ms - Mitchell, Moody, and Mafia. The disparity in income has always seemed like one of the worst in the state, though, for such a small place. There was a time when Galveston Ball was an NFL factory. Now most of the athletes in the area move to other school districts. But the poverty is still there. Then you have the ultra rich there, too. It's a strange place in many ways. Not sure how this is related to recruiting. But my middle name is Tangent. In any case, I would deny to Malakai's family that Galveston even exists. As far as they're concerned, the Gulf starts in Corpus Christi and then heads south to South Padre. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
I'm heading down there today to spend a couple of days with my daughter, and we're going to have a blast. I love Galveston. Fuck all you haters. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Just to circle back, I wonder what Lake Michigan was like on that day. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
It is to everyone. I grew up with it, so my shock was my first vacation to Florida and I could actually see the ground below the water. "What is this wizardry?" I thought it was normal to have something rub against your leg on a regular basis and not know if it was seaweed, a jellyfish, or a shark. One of God's many mysteries! -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
It's all Mormon. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
You just have to go far enough south. The brown water is the silt from the Mississippi River. It clears up around Corpus Christi. But sure. Galveston is going to be a shock. No question. I'm just glad you apologized first. -
Texas A&M Recruiting 2026: The World's Drunkest Elk
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
The avoidance of mentioning Texas, specifically when referencing Turntine's recruitment, is so delicious. Well, peak roller coasting was Jimbo. I'm not sure Elko has the same potential. But Aggie is Aggie, so roller coasting is exactly what they're going to do. See baseball this year. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
I realize Austin isn't exactly next to the Gulf Coast, but if coming from Hawaii they feel themselves hankering for the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean, Lake Michigan is going to be as much of a shock as the weather overall. At least once you make it to the Gulf of Mexico the water is going to feel a lot more like Hawaii than anything remotely close to Ann Arbor. And you can always hit up one of the nearby lakes. I'm not trying to suggest it's the same as Hawaii, but it's a darn sight closer than anything Michigan has to offer. Also, I wish we'd just set up an academy in the South Pacific islands and the west coast of Africa. For linemen especially. Oh, and for recruiting purposes, encourage a large Mormon population to relocate the Hill Country. I swear The Church of Latter Day Saints has converted every talented Tongan and Samoan football player on the planet. When Gerry says Malakai Lee has family in the DFW area, dollars to donuts it's Euless. -
Saban told him to be wary of the job. Saban's personal experience with one group at Texas trying to hire him while another group successfully cock blocked the hire caused him to caution Sarkisian on the difficulties of getting everyone on the same page. Sarkisian should get a lot of credit for the turnaround, but having the support of Eltife and Del Conte, and having everyone aligned has been extremely helpful. Along with outside groups taking initiative with NIL even while the athletic department was uncooperative. It's been a team effort. But if the coach isn't the right fit, then none of the rest of it matters. It feels great to have the right fit in place. Along with you, I had a lot of question marks, and the first two seasons sure helped to support that. There are a lot of favorite parts of this interview, but one of the big ones that helped change my perspective was going over Carroll's history prior to USC, his first year there, then Saban's coaching history prior to taking the Alabama job, and his first year there. I knew Carroll was a lucky win for USC as a coach. Mike Garrett was a terrible AD for USC. No one wanted to work for him. They kept striking out on candidate after candidate. Then Carroll threw his name into the ring and Garrett grabbed at it like a drowning man lunges for a piece of driftwood. Saban coming out of Miami was a huge can't miss hire for Alabama, though. No one realized how dominant he'd actually be - how could we? - but everyone knew he'd be great. When LSU hired him it wasn't that obvious, but he'd done some good things at Michigan State. But I feel like I didn't have as good a perspective for Sarkisian's outlook until he went over the respective careers of his great mentors like he did. I also loved him talking about sitting down with Monte Kiffin when he was at USC with Lane Kiffin on staff. Or talking about the coaching trees out of Mike Holmgren on one hand and Mike Shanahan on the other. And any time Kyle Shanahan's name is brought up I always think about how he came to Texas because he wanted to learn offensive scheme and philosophy from Mack Brown and Greg Davis. It's like something out of Ripley's Believe It or Not.
-
Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: Boulevard of Broken Bagmen
SL Xpress replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
I guess I just feel like that 10 year span was the aberration. Not what's happening now. When I first started following Texas football we churned out great defensive tackles like Hallmark spits out Christmas movies. Shearer, McMichael, Sims. There were always playmakers in the interior defensive line. Jeter and Patton years later. And of course under Mack Brown in the first part of his tenure. The shocking thing to me is how few of these recruits are Texas high school players. To me that's the sea change this year. I always felt like we could do this if we would have ever made the effort. We've never made this kind of effort before. A lot of factors involved. The feeling we didn't have to. Maintaining great relationships with the Texas high school football coaches. Choosing to go after low hanging fruit rather than the challenge of out of state recruiting. Not building connections out of state. It helps that the size of the football staff has practically doubled. Texas has just never shown this kind of interest in out of state recruiting. And the kids they're bringing in aren't aware of how awesome Austin is. There are a lot of arrows in the quiver. NIL. Sarkisian's approach. Success in the draft. Post season success. The prestige of UT as a public school. And those have some barriers to entry about them. But Austin as a combination big city/college town is a true unicorn. I feel like Sarkisian is bound and determined to utilize all of the advantages Texas football has to offer.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... COOKIE MONSTER!