closetojumping

What do you think the big board actually looks like right now at S? I feel like I'm behind on understanding priority and class count at that position.

Yes. Skenes got $1M from LSU two years ago. College baseball is at the point of being able to compete with mid-lower round draft pick money for many roster spots and a much better lifestyle for 2-4 years versus riding buses in the minors. If you're surprised by this, I shudder to think about how you'd react if you saw the football and basketball side of things. LSU and Arkansas are ahead of everyone else, and Texas is right in the thick behind them. Moneywhipping one player, which is what ATM did, isn't getting out in front in NIL. It's being a drunken sailor fresh off the boat in a new harbor, which is who ATM has been in NIL dating back to when it was called playing the bag game. ATM isn't committing major NIL resources to baseball on the whole and the guy who helped on the Montgomery effort isn't always going to help - just ask Jimbo. Any school, at any point in time, in any sport, can do something crazy for a single player. It happens every cycle in football and basketball. We'll see it happen in other sports going forward. That isn't foundational or directional with NIL building though. Regarding Florida and Ole Miss for baseball, we'll have to agree to disagree. I already laid out for you the rest of the complications in examining and comparing NIL across many programs and understanding where Texas is at in the landscape. A high school player claiming certain dollar figures should only be believed if you see that crap in writing. Referencing where NIL sits if it is accurate in comparison to the tip top of the heap is fine, but the situation isn't dire. There are 299 D1 baseball programs. Texas NIL is top 4-8 in the country. As to corporate, outside of Marucci, I'm unfamiliar with other major corporate support for an individual program somewhere unless the Arkansas families are diverting through their corporate side, which is what the former LSU player/trainer is doing at Marucci. The work on the corporate end for Texas across all sports is burgeoning and will be a national leader over the longer haul. Folks forget that NIL is still a baby. Just now almost 3 years old. As Texas enters the SEC, any lamentations about where NIL sits in comparison to any other program in any other sport is unwarranted handwringing with few exceptions. LSU and Arkansas in baseball, OU in softball, and SCar in women's basketball are all formidable. The gap was wide early in baseball and that will close over time. Maybe the OU gap never closes because that program is so important to OU. Texas has met SCar where they are at in women's hoops, if not surpassing them. That's it. Texas is either the leader or at-level with others across the rest of the board and where we are even, we will be leavin'. Not saying there isn't a ton of work to be done, but that is a never-ending given.

One of things that almost never gets discussed about NIL so far, irrespective of sport, is how the capital gets allocated. I realize that is in part due to the opaqueness of NIL generally, and necessarily so. That said, it's also probably simply due to how poorly NIL is understood by fanbases and many folks in the media. I know it's not due to lack of interest, as NIL discussions sprout up on the boards and on XM84 daily. NFL salary caps are discussed ad nauseum. The big issue with the capital allocation is that it really freaking matters. It's like getting the salary cap wrong. Perhaps it is somewhat self-serving, but I really think the football NIL work at Texas, from both ends, is managing the roster in elite ways. Yes, there are still warts and the work never ends, but proof is visible. Basketball is a more even thing, but if the whole program is just above the vast majority other programs nationally in total outlay, that strategy isn't a problem. Volleyball is apparently similar. Baseball? I don't think they're on the right path strategically. If they were doing what they're doing at, say, Kansas State, it would make a lot of sense.

Sorry, just to build on this because NIL misinformation kind of pisses me off for very legitimate reasons on my end: -LBJ, Witt, Porter aren't back on the roster without strong NIL. -Gordon and Campbell don't end up thinking long and hard about a return to Texas without significant, mid-6 figure offers to each of them from TOF. There aren't more than 5-7 programs in the entirety of the college baseball landscape that are coming in that hot on such matters. Sorry.

Arkansas and LSU are ahead of Texas in baseball NIL. The Marucci money certainly puts LSU at the top of the class. The Hunt family and other uber wealthy folks for Arkansas have chosen to emphasize NIL on baseball. Tennessee beats its chest but they are not ahead of Texas in NIL unless marginally so. If they were able to flex the way they want folks to believe, they'd have kept Chase Burns. Any coach, for any program, is going to tell you they don't have enough NIL. Some guys on the collective side feeling the weight of delivering for a program will always tell you they don't have enough either. As a reporter, you're also an easy mark for getting word out there that someone somewhere doesn't have enough NIL support. Texas is not in the bottom half of NIL in the 16 team SEC for baseball. It's not even close, and if you really believe that, you are flatly wrong. It also won't be the case going forward. Now, Pierce choosing to more evenly distribute NIL is probably a strategic error on his part. That isn't what they're doing at LSU, Arkansas, Clemson, or Miami. That's a different discussion, however.

Give us the 8 programs in the SEC that you’ve discovered have strong NIL than Texas.

Now I see what you’re saying. I don’t know why I quoted you when I just wanted to post that image. Maybe I was going to type something and switched gears and forgot to delete the quote.

Sorry, man, I wasn’t responding to you. I just thought it was funny. Of course we all still would like to see things turn around on the year.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Calling people with a different opinion than your own a "troll" is weak and lazy as a forum tactic. Texas is currently 4-5 guys over the 85 man number for August. Texas is interested in multiple roles from the portal, so the number will go up by 2-3 more including a punter. There is about to be attrition in the range of 6-10 guys leaving the program. Anyone can leave, but prime candidates have some or all of the following traits: 1) Far from home 2) Helicopter parent 3) Running 3rd string or worse as a 1st or 2nd year player, running 2nd string or worse as a 3rd or 4th year player. Usually hasn't made a dent in the 2 deep. 4) In the doghouse with the staff 5) Potentially significant and career limiting underlying medical issue There is one player on the roster that checks all of those boxes and only one. Maybe Mitchell sticks around, but if you guys don't understand that he's a prime departure risk, you either haven't been paying attention or you are too naive to understand how things work in the portal + NIL era. Either way, you're taking an uninformed position and then howling at others that they're trolls. That's Dunning Kruger in real time.

How many Edges do you guys expect to be taken in this recruiting cycle?

There isn’t a person on this board who wouldn’t be pleased as punch to see it all come together for Vasek. So as long as he’s on the roster, no one is counting him out. Counting on him, however, would be foolish at this point. It’s year 2 for the player in a new era. Up or out, their choice or a program’s, it doesn’t matter. It has become too easy to move on quickly if someone can’t stay out of the training room.

Vasek is made of glass. Glad Texas is loaded at Edge in spite of that.

It was a bizarre post for you to derive such humor from, but you do you. Every thread on this board impacts the community on the whole. Sadly, that is true even when the thread is absolute trash and shouldn't have been started in the first place. If you're going to put stuff like this out there, other folks are going to respond, me included. Brain dumps in the form of new thread creations deserve responses in kind.

You're going to find responding to things like this to be futile. I find myself wanting to help, and then I realize, nope, the mods know what they're doing.

I know this is probably an unfair question and I am not trying to play "gotcha", Bobby, but was there anyone you saw in which they caught your eye for the wrong reasons and give you pause on how they'll fit into things? Not asking you to name names.

You call someone else narcissistic while presuming that any random thought that tumbles out of your brain needs to be presented to the board in a declarative new thread. Strong work. This whole thread, much as the last one, is just bandwidth-draining personal musings. You're taking the position, on a Texas board, that a Texas commitment needs to go elsewhere for his own good. The presumption, of course, being that you know better and can see the future. How do you expect something like that to be received? If you really have some sort of bizarre but genuine altruistic concern for Bolden's future and feel a need to warn him off from his current path, do you really expect him to be reading this board and then noting your thoughts? Then you use the "this young Man" trope that the guru boards always seem to draw in from posters, while positing another poster's age and condescending him at the same time. 20+ years of reading the boards and it is, still and always, old to see this same kind of behavior manifest over and over.

I looked it up. He played in all 14 games and took close to half of all non-garbage snaps. He sat the final 3 drives against Chattanooga and the final 2 drives against MTSU.

I think "DL" is a misnomer right now in this discussion. The NT/DT side of things will step back. The DE/Edge/OLB component is absolutely going to be better, and that could and should benefit all other elements of the D. I don't think anyone is giving that unit the proper weight because it has been so long since it was a strength at Texas with depth. Did you remove garbage time and missed time due to injury?

He didn't play as a "specialist" for Bama last year. What codaxxx meant is that he's hoping to see Niblack turn into Anthony Gonzalez for this season. Niblack played the majority of the offensive snaps for Bama last season at TE, he's a threat in the passing game, and he's fine in the running game unless you want to run through TE1 for some absurd reason. He's never going to be a guy mauling DEs in the trenches.

Do you understand context at all? You’ve been on the boards for 20+ years. Christ. I “literally” didn’t call the team a dumpster fire. I said the program is trending there. A grown man with a keyboard should have a clue as to how those are different and understand why. The rest is hopefulness on your end more than anything. This team has been poorly coached at times and the guy in charge fundamentally embarrassed everyone with his meltdown after UCF.

No one called it a dumpster fire. That said, if you’ve watched this team this season and thought “yeah, man, this program is headed in the right direction”, go ahead and say it. After Texas is unceremoniously disposed of this weekend, Terry faces almost a complete rebuild. He’ll be highly dependent upon his incoming recruits, hoping that Mitchell comes back again and gets better, and portal wizardry. Maybe that all works out, but this season and Terry’s history doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence.

In this era, Texas should be lagging no one on the diamond. Outside of LSU/Marucci NIL, no one is way out ahead of Texas on NIL. Being in year 6 or 7 and being this weak with holes everywhere is inexcusable. Texas Baseball should be one of the high-flyers in the sport right now. Texas should be a perennial top 5 program. This is pathetic. Don’t look now but the 2nd and 3rd most significant programs on campus are trending towards dumpster fires.

I send the staff strongly worded letters all of the time. I only post on message boards to fine tune my arguments with them. Otherwise, why are we here, right? It’s not like we’d be doing so in order to have our own opinions and discussions. The only thing “scary” about Blackshire clocking in at 261 is his cholesterol count.