Steamboat Willie

There’s a difference between dating flags and marriage flags, just like there’s a difference between a portal rental and a four-year program guy. Butterfly elbow tat? Maybe fun for a weekend. Probably not someone you’re giving a locker room key to for five years. Lower-back tattoo = transfer risk. Three commitments = early portal entry. “Proving the haters wrong” posts = NIL renegotiation coming by October. CJ’s just trying to save Texas from recruiting the human equivalent of a bullseye tramp stamp. Can’t blame him for playing the long game.

If you’re stunned, congratulations — you’re having the correct emotional response. This is Sark making a very deliberate, very loud statement that “good” isn’t good enough anymore. Last year’s defense flirted with elite. This year’s defense settled into solid-but-frustrating, especially once the back end started leaking oil midseason. And in Sark’s world, that’s unacceptable with championship-level talent on the roster. Enter Coach Boom. Again. Muschamp isn’t here to experiment, grow into the role, or vibe. He’s here to bring violence, accountability, and clarity — three things that quietly slipped this season. This is the defensive equivalent of saying: “Enough. We’re fixing this now.” Is it harsh to move on from PK after coordinating one of the best defenses in the country just a year ago? Yep. Is Muschamp a safer, higher-floor hire with instant credibility in the SEC arms race? Also yep. This feels less like a downgrade/upgrade debate and more like a reset of tone: Less confusion Fewer coverage busts More third-down stops More “you WILL do your job” energy And the timing matters. Muschamp coaching the bowl game means he’s already evaluating personnel, identifying portal priorities, and setting expectations before January hits. That’s not an accident. Bottom line: Sark just told everyone — players, staff, recruits, the SEC — that Texas is done being patient on defense. You don’t make this move unless you’re chasing something big.

Until Bobby accidentally lets something slip like “bigger back,” “home-run speed,” or “yeah, he returns kicks,” we’re all just standing around shaking the box and swearing we hear clues rattling. If he drops one real breadcrumb and this board will solve it in six minutes flat. Until then, it’s pure vibes, wildly confident guesses, and Twitter detectives working overtime. All anyone actually knows? There’s a mystery box under the tree with “RB” written on it in Sharpie.

Let Wingo develop. Coach the hell out of the drops and contested catches. But you still go shopping for a proven playmaker who forces safeties to panic and corners to backpedal. If Wingo or some of the other WRs (specifically the young ones) take a giant leap? Great — now you’re terrifying. If they don't? At least you didn’t leave Arch out there throwing to optimism and projection. That’s not a lack of faith. That’s roster management.

Right now the résumé reads: solid production, great build, tape still loading. That’s not a red flag — that’s the exact window where staying another year turns leverage into money.

While motives don't make this a sound move, most Big 12 programs aren’t opting in because they think borrowed cash magically turns them into a SEC team. They’re doing it because standing still in the NIL era is the fastest way to fall behind permanently. If you can’t retain starters, plug portal holes, or keep coaches from getting poached, you don’t even get to compete for the conference, let alone sniff a playoff. You need enough liquidity to stay relevant: retain core players, avoid roster collapse, stay bowl/playoff-adjacent, and protect media value. Bad idea if the goal is “borrow to become Ohio State, Georgia, or Texas.” Much more defensible if the goal is “borrow to avoid irrelevance while the sport sorts itself out.” This isn’t Big 12 bravado. It’s Big 12 triage.

Kanu isn’t some fringe guy hoping a good pro day and a sympathetic scout get him a combine invite. He’s already got the NFL body and the traits teams drool over. The issue isn’t if he’s draftable — it’s how early.

Jaylon Guilbeau was a tweener who got asked to be three different things over four years. Corner early, Star later, some nickel responsibilities sprinkled in. That’s not always a recipe for clean development or eye-popping tape, especially when the room keeps getting reloaded with blue-chippers. Was this his best year? No. And yeah, the coverage tightened up when rotations changed late. But context matters: he was a willing tackler, played special teams, and did the dirty work without drama. Coaches trusted him to line up correctly, which doesn’t show up in mock drafts but absolutely matters on Sundays.

Pretty much, yeah — but instead of a payroll deduction it’s a conference distribution garnish and instead of 36% interest it’s called “strategic revenue participation.” Same concept, better branding. Miss a payment and suddenly you’re selling Tuesday night kickoffs, your third-tier media rights, and a commemorative patch on the refs’ sleeves. But don’t worry — the term sheet will say “non-predatory.”

Most of this stuff is deliberately structured around legislatures, not through them. The conference cuts the deal, creates a separate commercial entity, and schools are just “licensing” rights or adjusting future distributions. On paper, the university isn’t selling the family silver — it’s just refinancing expected revenue. That distinction is doing a lot of legal work. And yes, when it does brush up against state oversight, the political incentive is basically nonexistent to stop it. Nobody wants to be the lawmaker who gets tagged as “the reason our school fell behind in NIL.” Fiscal restraint loses every time to booster pressure and talk radio outrage. So you end up with the worst combo: Complex financial engineering most voters don’t understand Short political time horizons Long-term obligations that won’t come due until everyone involved has moved on It’s not that legislators are voting “yes” after careful analysis — it’s that the deals are designed so they never have to vote at all. And when the bill comes due in 8–10 years, it’ll be someone else’s problem. Which, honestly, might be the most college-football thing of all.

PE isn’t buying the school. They’re buying future revenue streams, usually at the conference or affiliate-entity level, not carving up public universities like a private company. No PE firm wants oversight committees. These deals are structured specifically to avoid statehouse headaches. The moment a legislature can rewrite the terms, PE loses interest. That’s how this sneaks past the “how is this legal?” alarm bells. Think of it less as privatization and more as: “We mortgaged next decade’s TV checks because the portal is on fire today.”

A smaller group of programs with scale, donor depth, media value, and political leverage will keep playing at the highest level. Everyone else will quietly redefine “competitive” and call it sustainability. Not because they want to — because the math forces it.

That take is probably closer to the truth than most people want to admit. What we’re watching isn’t some abstract NIL growing pain — it’s a capital structure problem finally colliding with reality. A bunch of schools are operating like pro franchises without pro revenue certainty, and now they’re layering leverage on top of volatility. That works right up until it doesn’t. The timing you’re pointing to is key. TV deals rolling over, ACC exit fees collapsing, private equity sniffing around future distributions — all of that converges around the same window. When that happens, the sport won’t politely rebalance. It’ll bifurcate.

A rewrite for Tuesday: Careful — that’s not Portal Claus on the roof anymore. That’s his private-equity cousin, and he brought term sheets. Here comes Krampus, here comes Krampus, Right down Deadline Lane. Funds advancing, futures financing, Revenue shares in chains. NIL checks, backroom decks, Discounted cash-flow dreams. What fun it is to hit refresh While PE buys tomorrow’s teams. Same tune. Corporate lyrics. Merry Transfermas — now with leverage.

Short version: The Big 12 didn’t find a new revenue stream.It found a way to advance its allowance. Whether that’s smart leverage or a payday loan depends entirely on how well these schools spend it — and how ugly the next round of realignment gets. Either way, welcome to college football’s private equity era. Please keep your receipts.