Bunk Moreland

*insert parody of the show Community with Sorsby in the Jeff Winger role, McGuire playing the dean, and Ken Jeong as himself*

CJ standing next to Hank and Jordan

Yep, this is the answer. Texas is clearly focused on signing 8-10 elite high school recruits, surrounding them with a bunch of high-upside but cheap developmental prospects, and maximizing the NIL to bring in a bunch of Cam Coleman-level players next year to replace what they lose to the draft. And I happen to think they’ve figured out the right formula.

They still haven’t figured out what Texas realized after signing the #1 recruiting class: if you’re going to invest all that NIL in high school players, they’d better be on the field contributing next year. Otherwise it’s just dead money that you can’t allocate to bringing in a badass portal class. Didn’t work out so well for Texas last year and Sark is already showing he’s not going to make the same mistake twice.

You know better than to share your food obsessions on a livestream, CJ. That is going to haunt you forever, like Gerry and mayo corndogs. From now on you are going to be KC (Kettle Corn) Vogel.

My Heroes reference for, like, 2 people on here.

What are we even doing here? What a joke.

Wow, what a connection, Hank! I followed those Stanford teams very closely. Mitch was a tough, clever player. Not a very good shooter, but could hit the occasional clutch 3. But his court vision and IQ were excellent and he had a gift for creating plays in the halfcourt game. That 2007-08 Stanford team was loaded with talent. In addition to the Lopez twins, they also had Landry Fields (who played five years in the NBA and was the GM of the Hawks) and Anthony Goods and Lawrence Hill (who both played overseas for years). They never reached their potential because Trent Johnson could never maximize his squad. I had a hard time watching that sweet 16 game because I loved both teams.

Fair enough. Apologies for my defensiveness. I completely agree with you that the coaches should ideally allocate substantial resources to DT recruiting and that it should be split between elite prospects and more developmental players with elite traits or high upside. Using the latter criteria, I would say that Sweat and Murphy had elite traits, even if the industry did not consider them elite prospects. Byron Murphy had elite strength, quickness, and productivity. He broke Von Miller’s high school sack record at Desoto. That’s elite disruption at a high level of competition. The staff should look for guys with those sorts of traits, even if they’re not 5-stars.

This is an obnoxious response. The irony of your statement is that now the coaches are actually going to focus harder than they did even a year ago on developmental prospects with upside. So, paradoxically, it might be more likely going forward that the coaches would find another Murphy and Sweat than the trend lines the last few years would suggest. But my point was that if you can find a 5- or high-4-star DT, you go all-in because they are like a supernova if they hit their ceiling. Okay, how about this: you go offer all the 3-star DTs that you’d like hoping to find Byron Murphy and I’ll go pay $1.5M to Jalen Carter. Deal?

I would add Currie to the list. There are just not enough truly elite DTs out there, so loading up on high-end IDL talent in high school recruiting feels more important than ever.

Read my follow-up post. They clearly are a blue blood program based on overall resume, but at what point does their downward trajectory kick them out of the club? OU will be competitive going forward, but they are never going to be a dominant force in college football again unless something drastic changes like pooling revenues.

“Joey the Mouth” -Bobby