closetojumping

Have any preseason rankings been released? I assume Texas will be a top 5 pick. Is anyone besides maybe Kentucky and Florida supposed to be worth a damn in the SEC?

What does the Edge wish list look like at this point?

Texas is favored in this game. Seems absurd.

Sucks for him. He’s the lone Longhorn on the Commies’ roster, I think.

You think 10-8 is the minimum for Texas to get in? I’ve read that 7-11 might do it given this league, but you follow more closely than I do. Not getting in at 9-9 or even 8-10 seems kind of crazy to me. It was OU. Happy for the win and all but “in the SEC” is a silly trope when it is simply Texas playing OU.

While this just tugs at the heartstrings and all, there are a few problems here: 1) they’re not “kids”. they’re in their 20’s. 2) i have been all for wealth transfer when merited during this NIL transition. when merited. this isn’t that. this is a guy saying “go find more alums to pay my mediocre brother off so he can mooch less off of me. “ Maybe you don’t contribute to NIL so it doesn’t matter to you and you get to cheer for the results of NIL’s largesse anyway. Some of us have been quite involved with NIL and are getting really sick of this end of the nonsense. So yeah, I will be rooting against these two paid professionals in adulthood. You do whatever suits you, and tuck the naive admonishments away for private time.

This update highlights the perversity of the current anarchy in the CFB realm. “Hey, my brother isn’t very good, but you guys need to overpay him as well. Don’t worry about the merit of it, pay up. By the way, don’t look at my performance versus my HS rank, as it’s trash and I’m a one trick pony. Pay me north of $1M to mostly catch a couple of screens each game and maybe score one ST touchdown next season, thanks!” I’m rooting against these guys and I hope Georgia decides to overpay for them. Do not want.

Texas has zero issues with NIL on the basketball end. Multiple benefactors happy to help there. You think Tre Johnson or some of those well-regarded transfers are in Austin solely for their love of UT? Absurd.

You make good points and thanks for your help.

Everyone should be careful about conflating overall NIL with what is run through the collective. Total numbers like those quoted include corporate and outside support like Burnt Endz for the TES. DR Pepper and myriad other corporate programs aren’t going through TOF, to be clear.

They’ll be up. I’m not sure what “way up” means here. By gross dollars? Up, yes. By percentages? I wouldn’t call it “way up”.

The simple answer is “no”. If he coulda, he woulda. Also, fade routes are nothing more than vanity play calls for an OC. Just thinking they’re creating art. It’s stupid. Sarkisian needs to never call one again. They are the lowest percentage pass plays in the book.

My bad if so. I don't follow hockey and it read like he was referencing recruiting rankings to me.

Broughton and Mukuba were solid 4 stars, ranked as such by every service. The OL of Goosby-Conner-Majors-Campbell-Williams, from a composite perspective, went 3-4-4-5-4 stars. Helm was a lowly regarded 3 star and he went 6 for 56 on Saturday and you didn't rank him. I appreciate the development narrative, but accuracy should matter.

A DE talking about development as something sacred and then going to play for a Mike Elko team is like these guys that talk about "academics" and then signing with LSU or Oklahoma. Mike Elko has been a FBS DC or HC for going on 16 years now. In those 16 years, 4 DEs have been drafted. Duke Eljifor in the 6th from Wake. Khalid Kareem in the 5th at ND. Demarvion Leal (a high 5 star) in the 3rd and Michael Clemons in the 4th at ATM. If you give Elko all of the development credit for the defensive players drafted under his watch in 15 years, meaning guys drafted within 3 years following a year of his coaching as DC or HC, he's had 24 guys drafted. Kevin Johnson, a DB at WF, was drafted the spring of 2015, roughly one year after Elko got to campus. Jerry Tillery was drafted in the 1st round 3 years after Elko's one year on ND's campus had passed. Both of those are as stretchy as you can get for credit to the coach and those are the only 2 1st round defensive players ever drafted around Elko. Elko's highest ranked 5 stars, Leal and Jaylon Jones, eventually went in the 3rd and 6th. We've done a lot of review about Elko the Developer mythology at Surly. The dude is basically an excellent X's & O's guy with an extremely checkered history as a developer of talent on defense. For comparison, Kwiatkowski has put 5 DEs into the league and 2 were 1st round picks, along with a 2nd, 3rd and 7th. Never mind the 39 total defensive players with one less year of credit as a DC.

1) Salary caps will have little impact on NIL. 2) No one can prevent an adult from earning money for their name, image and likeness. The NCAA is spineless and any effort to prevent something as banal as a booster paying a player for a signed jersey will collapse under review/in court. The NCAA can't do a damned thing about corporations being involved either. There is also nothing shady about any of it and the geezers who continue to whine about such things need to get a grip. The market sorts the rates for contributions from players and they get paid. 3) Added revenue for players will inherently dim some of the needs from collectives and will be much welcomed. 4) Larry Ellison being involved changes very little for anyone except Michigan itself. We have already been dealing with Phil Knight. There will be others. Some teams will show up occasionally and go nuts while other teams have a big backer who can swoop in whenever they want for the right target. 5) Texas, Ohio State and a few others have built a layer cake foundation for winning each cycle if the results on the field and in the draft are present.

There’s more going on here than just attitude and heart. He’s got real off the field problems and the only way they get fixed is if he eventually wants to fix them. There’s a reason other programs aren’t all over him and also why Texas told him to not let the door hit his ass on the way out.

Texas has speakers pumping noise on its sidelines.

He certainly wasn’t prioritized this week, and for good reason. You can’t drop a certain TD with comparable fighting for oxygen on be sidelines while you do that. I watched him play in the fourth. Right in front of me. He absolutely played and was perfectly healthy.

I assume there’s going to be a big OOC home and home in 2028/2029 to replace the prior set up with Georgia or Florida or whoever it was. I’m assuming a Big 10 team or Notre Dame, plus La Tech and UTSA and 9 SEC games.

I was about to say, watching Gabe Ikard run his mouth about Hill while constantly talking up Stutsman is quite rich. If you need a LB to show up 8 yards down the field, maybe make a tackle, and then prance around like he’s accomplished something, Danny Stutsman is your guy.

Just looking at that list of freshmen, holy smokes, man. It really looks like an amazing class, and that’s on top of the excellent classes ahead of it. It’s gratifying that almost none of these guys is a “must play” for Texas this season, yet still, guys are forcing their way into legitimate minutes because of their talent.

147 tackles, 9 sacks, 2 FFs, 2 INTs if you remove the 2 Arkansas games from his numbers. Those are good stats, but not great stats. That Arkansas 2022 game has done a lot of work for this dude. I assume he has 10/19 circled on his calendar this year, so Arkansas better prepare themselves for an asswhipping.

Thanks for the post and it’s a great topic and visual. I think the big thing, for me at least, is that the FCS opponents and really weak G5 opponents are still skewing things horribly with a 3 game sample size. Directionally, though, it all looks right. Does a staff develop their program out of the left side of the graph as the season goes on? That will be interesting to track as well. The big thing with Georgia is that they really are lacking game breakers on offense. They look pedestrian, and not just because Bobo is a vanilla comfort hire. They have a decent poster base and that’s the big thing they’re wringing their hands about on their boards right now. I don’t blame them given the firepower they’re about to face from here to the Ga Tech game.

Lists like this are dumb when the season is only two weeks old. I watched some of Ohio State on Saturday night and Smith is legit. That said, the opponents have not been legit. Akron and Western Michigan tell us nothing about how Smith compares to other talents. The same is true for Williams at Bama. Western Kentucky and South Florida? Okay then. Lagway's being touted for playing against a team that wouldn't be a top 10 6A high school team in Texas. At least let these guys all play a couple of conference games before doing this kind of thing. Or at least play road games/neutral games against the likes of Clemson and Michigan first.