GQ03

Is the Players Era Festival a true tournament and not just a showcase? They already have the matchups set for the 2nd day which isn't something you'd see in a true tournament setting/format.

I'm not gonna lie, first time I heard of it I thought it was a Culinary Arts trade school.

Not to mention they only won by 4 at home against someone named Le Moyne.

Other than him commenting on Graceson Littleton's commitment that he'd cook him, I haven't seen anything.

So, when kids are playing AAU (or spring/summer club ball) at a high level the teams they are playing for are usually affiliated with one brand or another. Being affiliated with that brand has you playing the majority of your games in their exclusive circuit where you only playing against Nike or Adidas or Under Armor teams. Chavez has been the best player on one of the best Nike teams (Cy-Fair) on the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) for a number of years now. With a kid that good, Nike has identified her as one of their future stars and that relationship over the years is one they hope to parlay into a professional one when the time is right. Could she go against the grain and sign with an Adidas school and still sign with Nike afterwards? Sure but Nike would probably prefer that the little girls that buy up all of the Aaliyah Chavez college jerseys have the Nike swoosh in the corner and not the three stripes. Hope that helps explain it some.

I hear you but using the most spoiled fanbase in all of cfb sort of proves my point. We shouldn't be that and after what we've endured over the last decade+ I'd just hope we'd appreciate where we are a bit more.

Man, I'm a little embarrassed that so many fans left the stands by this point. I know the game was in hand and maybe it was extremely hot in the stadium or something but it wasn't that long ago that Strong and Herman were on our sidelines while we were getting thumped by the likes of Oklahoma St & BYU. I would think we'd savor times like this. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Weaver was my first thought but then I thought about mimicking last year's starting lineup and potentially running & gunning from the start with Larry in the lineup.

@Gerry Hamilton with the news of Tramon Mark likely being out for tomorrow's season opener, who would you go with to replace him the starting lineup? Larry, Weaver or Kent??

The way that rivalry goes is the games are close at Jordan-Hare and complete beatdowns in Tuscaloosa. Even with Bama down, I'm not sure anyone expects this Auburn team to go on the road and keep it within 20 of the Tide.

You still think Presley is higher in the pecking order than Pryor?

He had them convinced "nobody believes in us" after they won the first national championship on the way to the 2nd one.

Perfect game for Aaliyah Chavez to attend on her OU official visit.

Bobby, we are going to whip their @$$. I'm conservatively picking 34-13 but I really want to go to 45-13. They have nothing offensively to threaten our defense. Nothing.

New Mexico was his dream school and they wouldn't give him the time of day. He went the juco route and then ended up at New Mexico St and then transferred to Vandy.

@Gerry Hamilton, so is this basically a first come first served type of situation with Sims, Simpson, Mathis, Mbatchou, Wynn, etc?? First two to commit are in and then we shut it down....??

I'm pretty sure I saw that the game would be 3:15pm on the SEC network. Edit: I posted at the same time as Blake.

I guess it was Reed of A&M but I originally assumed it was Ryan Williams. Durham would've been a good choice too.

I agree but when you only have 3 games to go off of then you have no choice but to judge the full body of work and to this point that game represents 33.333% of what we've seen and that didn't show me they were a clear top 2 team in the country. They're good but I don't know that they're better than Ohio State, Georgia, Ole Miss, Tennessee, etc.

Alabama didn't look all that great vs a not good South Florida team.

Theirs has been viewed as tougher because not only is there the SEC schedule with Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, LSU, etc but of their 4 non-conference games 3 of them are against in-state power 4 programs in Miami, UCF and Florida St (I know) whereas as OU's toughest non-conference is either Tulane or Houston in addition to Temple and Maine.

I live down the street from where Hawkins played his HS ball and I don't recall him setting the world on fire back then. I just don't see him coming in and turning losses into wins. This seems more like a going from Swoopes to Heard like situation moreso than Rattler to Williams.

Man, things really are different in Florida than they are in Texas.

Was he not doing that at Texas?

If it plays out like that then there's a good chance Miami is the #4 seed and Notre Dame the #5 seed depending on what happens in the Big 12.