Glass Joe

It looks like “OR” is going to get a lot of reps against Texas St.

RC Slocum - 14 seasons - 123 wins, 3 conference titles, 3-time conference “Coach of the year” awards, 0-5 in NY6 bowls. Never coached for a National championship. Zero top 5 ranked finishes. Fred Akers - 15 seasons - 108 wins, 3 conference titles, 3-time conference “Coach of the year” awards. 1-3 in NY6 bowls. Coached in 2 National championship games. Three top-5 ranked finishes.

A&M got a 5-year NCAA probation (including no TV appearances and no bowl game in 1994) for violations in Slocum’s first 3 years as HC. This was after aggy fired Jackie Sherrill for recruiting violations and probation in 1988 (with RC as his DC, and noted by the NCAA investigation as being a facilitator of illegal payments to recruits). Those recruiting violations (boosters paying players), led to the apex of the Slocum era (and perhaps aggy football all-time), where they won 3 straight SWC titles from 1991-1993. Of course, those aggy teams managed to lose all 3 Cotton Bowls those years, as well as losing non-conference games to schools like Tulsa (yes, Tulsa!), and a 30-pt loss to OU. My personal favorite Slocum achievement was his first season in the Big 12 (1996) where he lost his first two non-conference games to unranked foes (one loss to Steve Sarkisian-led BYU, and another loss to ULaLa). He then opened Big 12 play by losing to Colorado, K-State, and Tech. In fairness, Slocum did finish second in the B12 conference in 1997, and celebrated this by losing another Cotton Bowl (0-4 in Cotton Bowls for RC). In 1998, Slocum was a heavy underdog but managed to upset K-State in the B12 Championship game in OT. Slocum celebrated by losing the Sugar Bowl, making him 0-5 in NY6 Bowl games for his career. After 1998, Slocum went 16-16 in Big 12 play over his final 4 seasons, and was fired in 2002. It doesn’t require much connecting of dots to conclude Slocum inherited the best team money could purchase in the dying SWC era, parlayed that into 3 SWC titles. But, his teams always lost non-conference and bowl games during that 3-year apex era, so nothing translated into any worthwhile national achievements. Once the Big 12 came into existence (1996) it didn’t take too long for Slocum and aggy found their historical level (mediocrity) and he was fired by 2002. I assume aggy built the Slocum statue so that current generations of aggy fans would be aware that they actually won a conference championship within the last 30 years.

Should’ve put a money bag under his arm.

Claude Mathis is going to do something special tonight 😉

He has a $100M contract, so I don’t think he’ll need any work once his time at LSU is done.

For those wondering who is really pulling the strings in this little drama, see above. That a moron like this can get elected to the highest position in a state government tells you everything you need to know about Louisiana.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why Kiffin / LSU are willing to die on this hill? The players in question are good (Dewuan Wright will be a back-up to Treydez Greene, Harris probably starts at DT, and Pyburn would be DE3), but none of them are difference makers and collectively they aren’t going to change LSU’s season-end record. I just don’t get the brinksmanship by LSU here. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. That said, I have zero doubt a Baton Rouge yokel judge who has to face local voters would be willing to contort the law to create a ruling favorable to LSU. I almost hope this happens just so we can get to the really juicy phase of this little drama - the reaction and wrath of the other 15 SEC schools.

Last season, Connelly’s top 5 “prediction” for the CFB Playoffs were: Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame, and UGA. So, three of those 5 didn’t even make the Playoffs (ND, PSU, and Mich). To give Connelly some credit, he was one of the very few to correctly predict Clemson would NOT make the Playoffs last season (Joel Klatt predicted a Clemson vs Penn State national championship…LOL). For me, these silly simulations point out the relative weakness and imbalance between the depth of the SEC and the other conferences. For example, 3 Big Ten teams are all more likely to make the Playoffs than ANY SEC team (which has an auto bid…LOL). It reveals that for the top teams of the Big Ten, there is very little risk of losing conference games against many of the lesser Big Ten programs. By contrast, with the SEC adding a 9th conference game to each schedule, it’s much more likely SEC Playoff contenders will lose conference games and thus fail to make the Playoffs. Also, a school like Tech effectively gets an automatic bid to the Playoffs because there’s very little chance any other Big 12 school can beat them during conference play. The Big 12 is effectively a one-team conference for Playoff purposes. Thus, Tech is a Playoff shoo-in. It’s important to understand that for all the silliness of Connelly’s simulations, they are not measures of how good or bad a team will be. Instead, they take a proprietary quantitative-derived metric (S+P) of a team, and then run it against the all other teams on the schedule by the same metric, to get a likelihood of your season-end record. For this article, it then runs a million simulations of all college FBS football games / records to derive the likelihood of a school making the Playoffs.

Most of them.

Are they placing bets, or buying insurance? Pro sports franchises buy insurance against injuries and player contract payout clauses, so I’m not sure this is really different. At the end of the day, all that’s being done is insuring that if Kiffin wins the NC and LSU owes him $3M, they have the funds available to pay him the bonus he earned. If LSU does NOT win the NC this year, then they don’t owe Kiffin the $3M, and these trades on Kalshi expire. It sounds like cheap insurance.

It’s worth noting how many seniors / 5th year guys are starting for aggy, particularly on the defense. I’ve been saying for a while that aggy’s greatest risk is there lack of depth. There just isn’t much talent / future difference makers on the depth chart after the front line starters for 2026 (Marco Jones, Aaron Gregory may be exceptions). I’m assuming Craver goes to the NFL after this season. This helps to explain why aggy went full Jimbo-NIL mode in this recruiting class to replenish the dearth of young talent in their pipeline.

Tate Sandel is the one who concerns me the most on that depth chart.

I didn’t realize Fodje has moved to Center. Interesting. He showed me something as a true frosh RT last season, so I was expecting him to develop even more at the position this year.

Claude Mathis just being Claude Mathis.