bejezuz

It's a really fucked up situation. Rusty Hardin must have gotten PAID. I'm talking 7 figures up front, easily. The thing is, you've gotta pick a direction and go with it, and it appears they've gone with (mostly) consent. There must be too much corroborating evidence out there that they know about to stick with a pure fabrication defense.

Their defense is going to be that he has a fetish and all these girls consented to participating in the fetish. They can't run from his weird sex addiction. All they can do at this point is argue consent and make these girls look like prostitutes. I'm guessing the strategy at this point is to lean into it and hope that Watson can pull a Louis CK and make a comeback when most of the anger blows over and the media moves on to the next pervert/rapist. It's friggin' ugly, but this isn't Rusty's first sex case. They're all friggin' ugly.

Hardin is going to spin this as "don't put yourself in a situation to get extorted or exploited." Sort of like the NBA teaching rookies to make sure to take the used condom with them after shagging a groupie.

A good friend of mine from high school was murdered less than 2 years after we graduated. She had just broken up with her boyfriend, who apparently had been very controlling and abusive. He went to her work, shot her in the face, then shot himself in the head. The saddest part, the murderer was the older brother of another girl who I graduated with and knew well since 6th grade. They were good friends as well, and she introduced the couple.

All I wanted for Christmas was an XBox One X. The wife bought me a watch instead. Microsoft is saying they won't be in stock regularly until June at the very least.

I don't want to spoil anything, but good recovery from the "embarrassing incident" story at Whataburger to breakfast cereal and sugar babies. His sugar baby story was the funniest part of the 'cast. Well, that and "3rd and 17."

That doesn't stop James Harden from making it rain every time he's in Atlanta, Miami, or any other city known for their big-booty stripper scene.

Maybe he has very specific tastes.

It tells me that Hardin knows that there is corroborating evidence that places Watson with some of these girls, and possibly corroborating evidence of sexual activity. A fabrication defense has a lot more freedom at trial than a consent defense, so you wouldn't want to limit yourself this early unless you know at least some of what the other side has.

Deja vu.

We don't know that there weren't rumors. We have no idea the sort of fires that the Texans were putting out behind the scenes until they decided it was no longer in their best interest to keep this stuff buried.

I guess we're more conditioned to believe in conspiracies after Trump, but you're absolutely right. The likelihood of this all being a massive conspiracy and total fabrication is very small. It's just way too hard to pull off.

Don't worry, she'll get dragged through the mud for that lapse in judgement. However, if you're alleged to be a serial massage pervert, the less training someone has the better chance you have of putting them in a bad situation. Licensed therapists usually aren't interested in "extras."

I wasn't targeting that phrase, just trying to figure out how the case came together from a practical standpoint. The Texans being the central nexus makes the most sense to me.

Someone or something had to drive these clients to Buzbee prior to the news breaking. I'm doubting very seriously it was they all happened to click on the same Google AdSense link after searching for "how to sue NFL player for sexual assault." I don't think this was "ambulance chasing" by Buzbee, though. Buzbee hiring private investigators to seek these women out and get them to sign with him is both criminal (barratry) and unethical, and probably not very smart when targeting someone with the finances to fight back like Watson. That would put his bar card at serious risk. Eliminating that level of dirty pool, I can think of only two possibilities: either 1) several smaller-time attorneys pieced together that this case had multiple victims, networked, and decided together to refer these cases to Buzbee, or 2) this activity was all reported to one entity (either the Texans directly or someone else who fed it to the Texans). It isn't implausible that the Texans stopped mitigating and guided these women toward Buzbee directly or through a referring attorney once negotiations broke down to where this was their only play. Got to admit, the sheer balls it would take to keep something like this quiet when the McNairs and Jack Easterby are being drug through the mud daily by the local an national press is astounding, if true.

Unhappy Endings

Isn't all of this the reason that Watson wants out in the first place? He doesn't trust the organization to rebuild a team around him.

Actually... https://tspb.texas.gov/prop/tgm/tgm-tour/tgm-tour.html

I can vouch for these great folks. I got my wife her shot through them after our local hub proved to be impossible to get an appointment.

Let this be a lesson to us all: no matter how much money you make, your girl will figure out a way to spend it.

Let's just hope Sark handles his first quarterback controversy better than Mack did.

He's taking the spot of someone at USC who was able to transition from a recruiting role to an actual on-field coaching position: https://usctrojans.com/news/2021/1/29/usc-trojans-football-seth-doege-promoted-tight-ends-coach-clay-helton.aspx Maybe he just really wants to be a football coach. That would never have happened at Texas with his pedigree. Four years ago this guy was working at UH part-time while still working as a home health aid. Check out his LinkedIn, it's enlightening: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-carrington-aa0159107/. The dude pulled himself up from nothing, so I don't blame him for taking a step up at USC when Helton has shown he's willing to launch a coaching career for a former recruiter. We couldn't offer him an opportunity like this on this staff.

I'm not sure if I'm right on this, but it seems like the 85 scholarship limit was amended to exempt from counting any senior playing their 5th season. This would not only exempt from the count any member of the class of '16, but also any senior in the class of '17 who never redshirted. By my count, we may have 2 additional scholarships for Derek Kerstetter and Cade Brewer.

I don't think it's been this bad to be a Houston sports fan since the Oilers left.

It's the difference between getting out of a relationship with a good person who just isn't pulling their weight and getting out of a relationship with a Grade-A narcissist. Charlie shouldn't be a head coach, but I like the guy and wish him well. With Tom, the results just weren't worth all the bullshit. He could still develop into a winning head coach somewhere else, but he'll always be a dick.