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Moments later...

If Sark was still drinking he could set his beverages on Jimbo’s head.

Problem for both of us is that we got a lot of shit going on. I lay it on the ATM 2023 recruiting thread over the past few pages and was saying more or less all of it consistently since the start of this cycle. But you may not have that much time or interest to go through 4-5 pages. It's hard to do well repeating here, especially given the nature of this thread is different than that one, but I'll try. I figure given the fact that every page on this thread has at least 2 posts from Randolph Duke trending towards 5000 words, so the length on this post won't anger anyone.--- Suffice it to say, no, they're not out of money. The bigger problem is that their timing for the 2022 class was truly serendipitous on multiple levels. The 2022 class is the actual outlier, and they're going to pay a price above rubies for having it unfold the way it did. In the 2022 class, these things happened: 1) ATM alums committed from the get-go in the winter of 2021/2022 to landing a massive haul, leveraging the 9-1 corona season and making a push towards the upper echelon. I was writing about this last Jan 2021 forward on that board, so the recruiting dorks here weren't really shocked by what unfolded, but even we were surprised at the magnitude of it all. A few of us have friends involved with covering things for Texas and nationally and one of my business partners is directly involved with driving what happened last cycle at ATM. Plus I have buddies at some other places, including inside the machine in Tuscaloosa. All of these cats knew that ATM was going to be a force in 2022's signed classes. 2) Complete upheaval around ATM geographically. Texas shits itself and goes 5-7. Riley pulls his bullshit. LSU dumps out and then hires a yankee. Florida spits the bit. Auburn falls apart. Bama and Georgia can't sign everybody. Penn State sucking wind also helped. 3) NIL has become a bigger maelstrom, and done so faster, than anyone expected. That led to adjustments happening rather quickly for schools normally playing the bag game, who started recalibrating towards NIL. ATM ended up being a bigger player in the bag game in part due to dilapidating competition. 4) Finally, for 2022 this wasn't part of the fortuitous nature of what happened for them, but it certainly is a big deal in all of this - ATM did what aggies always do and aggied the whole thing up. They went so over the top on the bags that they wound up only bidding against themselves on multiple recruitments - Dindy, Evan Stewart, the Miami Stewart, a couple of the guys from NJ/PA, and Walter Nolen, at least. So what now? Well, NIL money, interest, and competitiveness across the landscape is already dwarfing the dark market in size and scope. You are a program that has NIL going (Texas, Oregon, Ohio State, Miami), or you're showing proof of concept that you can do it (UGA, Michigan, ND), or you can do it in limited ways and will be hyperfocused with it (SEC powers who don't have massive jack beyond what they were doing in the bag game), or you're making shit up and hoping to figure it out by the time what you've sold needs to be delivered (USC, Kansas, this is also what Switzer and OU have done - they're hoping to fully fund FB, women's gymnastics (I think) and women's softball - the sports in which they're already market leaders. you may know more there, but this is the word in that the concept is fine, but it's not funded yet and he announced it as though it were.), and then you've got ATM, who is still trying to play the bag game and poo-poo the NIL world to recruits. That tactic worked a little last cycle, and it is failing this cycle. Every recruit, and I mean every one of them, that teams talk to now are asking within the first 10 minutes of dialogue about how the school's NIL looks and can work for them. Well, ATM doesn't have an answer for that yet. They were also not really worried about it. Now the realization is setting in that the bags above the table can get pretty big, and if you don't have additional corporate density on top of rabid alumni support, you might as well light the cigarette now, because you're already fucked if you don't have a rich tradition of winning titles or Phil Knight. Next, with their behaviors in the 2022 cycle, then mocking everyone with overt lies in the press, then attacking the fucking GOAT, and constantly at every turn shitting on Texas and the rest of the Big 12, they pissed everyone off. Every school recruiting right now is going out of their way to vomit on ATM to recruits. It's hostile. After that, they replaced quality with garbage in key coaching roles. Durkin for Elko is a massive net negative from a player/recruit relations perspective. Elko was a fucking animal in recruiting. Trading out Henson and getting Addazzio instead is a hilarious downgrade in every aspect. There are recruits out there telling stories about what an asshole Addazzio has been to them in dialogue, already. Whoops. Losing Schmidt to OU was also a big deal according to some. I don't know how seriously to take that tidbit. Finally, they went 8-4 with the bowl forfeit last season. Their results are starting to just look like typical aggie results. They have the stench of eternal mediocrity attached to them and other programs are beating the shit out of them with that. Plenty of schools do that to Texas too, but with schools like Arkansas, Baylor, and ATM, the Texas rebuttal of "they're Baylor/Arkansas/ATM. they're mediocre forever. we're Texas and we will be back." Doesn't work as well against OU, Bama, and a few others of course. ATM will eventually drop a giant bag on a few players and finish with a top 20 class. Anything better than that will surprise me, and I've been saying they were in for rougher waters since this past winter when people starting really grinding about what they'd done. I'm still surprised it is this ugly with them. And yes, irrespective of other sentiments on this page, there's been further blowback for getting the OV shit wrong with some of the guests invited at the end of the month.

"So then dangon man dat there Saban man come 'round talking bout dangon croot man boom man all water hole, can't you believe it?" Sark: ".....?....."

Over heard in the conversation between Jimbo and Sark…

“So uh, your recruiting class is pretty balls”

Sunday Huddle: News and Notes from the weekend Hudson Standish (Toviano ... 👀 👀 👀 👀 )

I found a forever home for one of the stray apostrophes

Josh Pate on Late Kick right now basically calling out USC for overpromising to Addison and A&M probably fracturing their locker room by not delivering the goods to their recruiting class. If this has gone mainstream, definitely not good for those staffs…

I have already picked out a ring so it is just a matter of when. Feels good to finally be done with the dating scene and POF and all that bullshit and settling down. Many times I never thought I would find someone to settle down with and I would forever just date and date. I welcome all the incoming fat jokes lol.

I recently got my son his first real guitar. *I'd like the record to show not a PRS

I’m not familiar with a football player named rollercoaster.

I am gonna be extra sensitive to this one. That is my nephew. Hookem!

Come with me, and we’ll see, a world of pure mediocrity.

aggy have been lamenting the post-Arch Longhorn recruiting haul but the silver lining has been their legendary recruiting event, the Pool Party, which is held at a student housing apartment complex. Pool party is scheduled for July 30. A few days ago, aggy realized a ncaa rule prohibits official visits until Sept. 1. The implication is they can't pay for travel, hotels or food for visitors for The Pool Party, which likely means guys who live outside of driving distance won't make it in. The rule has been in place since 2019.

The shitflinger. There’s probably already a word for it in German.

yesterday i asked my buddy, "if you could choose anyone in the entire world, and punch them dead in the face as hard as you can one time, free of repercussions, who would it be?" he quickly chose putin, which is a fine choice. when he returned the questioned i immediately answered, "jeff fisher." i have very little room in my heart for hatred these days, but i hate jeff fisher.

Fuck off with this line of thinking. Y’all realize Texas would be first on the list of “GTFO states” for blue states, yes? And despite the ruby red status of places like Alabama and Mississippi, there’s still 40% of us who hate our overall voting patterns. Not to mention that the percentage of Black residents is higher in these states than almost any blue state. And a lot of us in that 40% don’t have the means or privilege to just pick up and move. I get the sentiment but as a blue dot in a red state it gets real tiring to listen to our supposed allies writing us off to be sacrificed. At least Alabama elected Doug Jones in the last few years. When’s the last time a Texas Democrat won a statewide election?

Jimbo’s wife just wanted to ride rollercoasters.

Congratulations. One week from today, Mrs. NNM and I will celebrate 30 years. If you do it right, it’s all worth it. Wouldn’t trade those 30 years for anything. And yes, I realize I’m missing the point of the thread by not piling on Vic or trashing marriage.

Short bus. Fuckin' perfect. Never change, aggy, never change.

It's as if millions of cholas suddenly cried out in terror then were suddenly silenced

My nephew works at Red Robin.

Like @Wulaw Horn on an Arkansas road trip.

Or at least talk about it. Then do nothing.

"We were going to send you a wreath of dicks, but never got around to it" is the most Surly thing ever.