closetojumping

Good grief.

Outside of Josh Pate, I haven’t seen a single talking head pick Texas. All of XM 84 has gone with Georgia. SEC Radio is giving it the nonsensical “Georgia is going to welcome Texas to the SEC the hard way!!”, especially from Doering, who of course picked Texas 6th in the SEC for the same dumb fucking SEC honk reasons. The cool pick this week is that whatever the “real” Georgia is, that group is showing up this weekend and they’re going to run boss in Austin. I’m guessing everyone but Scheffler picks Georgia on Gameday tomorrow. Get Nick Saban going with the self-serving trope of “someone besides Bama is going to have to beat Georgia before I pick against them.” Right.

What I love is that I always espoused the mantra of "These fucking cheaters better hope they never live to see the day that Texas decides it has a payroll to meet." Then we'd watch as the best players, especially in the trenches, went elsewhere and all we had were plaintive whines and false piety about not cheating. @Huckleberry used to gnash his teeth that not only were we stupid for sitting on the sidelines, but we were pussies for not constantly reporting all of the cheating. Bitter years. Now, Texas has a payroll to meet, and that is great and hilarious. The part that these idiots and many others are failing/unwilling to consider is that that ability to meet a payroll is coupled with a staff that appears to have the one-two punch of not only evaluating well, but developing well. To boot, they're actively culling their targets at the top based on soft values analysis. You're then buying the best players that aren't turds who love football and want a championship experience on their way to the NFL or a good degree. We should remember to enjoy it while it lasts, because we damned sure know that UT can fuck it up and so can the football gods. I hope it all lasts forever, and that Texas wins many titles, and that we all get frequently laid. I just know that some of that is more ephemeral than I wish it would be. Not a bad post from a sooner. He's obviously full of shit about the paying players part, but a lot of the rest isn't wildly off base. Of course he's giving no credit for evaluation or culture or development, but I wouldn't expect him to do so. Here's funny irony though - OU bought David Stone. He's been a turd since he arrived and there are rumors that he's goldbricking in practice. They went out and did what they're whining about Texas doing in buying multiple guys during a cycle, exceeding market demand for several of them. They moneywhipped Jaylen Jackson to the point of Texas and Ohio State, two of the three NIL juggernauts, both noped the fuck out of the recruitment.

It's the same issue as most of the other historic cheaters - they don't have the kind of money they need now to moneywhip the marketplace. Save Ohio State, the rest of them only had enough to play a closed game against 8-10 other players where the stakes were relatively low. Players were bought for stuff as stupid as a $4k visit, $5k commitment and $10k signing all the way over to a max of like $150k for a Marvin Wilson. Fisher and the aggies came along and doubled everything in order to get people to ATM, but it still wasn't a ton. The Bama allotment maxed at $800k for the 2020 cycle and LSU's was less than that. Now? The price of poker moved by more than a full magnitude shift. None of those idiots can come close to that consistently except for Auburn, which is wholly dependent on the commitment from one patron and his whims. Ohio State was never in a spot where they worried about the money. So OU wasn't very active in the bag game, even if they've always cheated. Now that the burden is 8 digits? They're going to be making a lot of excuses and pointing a lot of fingers, same as the other fuckfaces that can get relegated to also-ran status.

I got 2/3s of the way through a mudhole and canned it. Here's the problem: Texas is expected to win this game by most folks here and in the media. Not in a blowout, and a loss is known as a real threat, but folks have confidence and expect to see a great game and for Texas to win. It's hard to write a semi-absurd article preying on the fears of the board and the nonsense from the media when there isn't a lot of that dickless behavior to warrant it. It would be forced and not genuine. So, meh, I moved on.

To be clear, Arnold had obvious bust flags surrounding him during his recruitment, and we laughed at his elevation to 5 star status on the recruiting board in real time. He was a QB camp hero. His family spent plenty of time lobbying scouts and the services to consider him in their rankings. He had zero elite skills or gifts. He is from Georgia, has deep ties to Georgia, went to several Georgia camps, and Kirby Smart and staff never aggressively pursued him. He couldn't beat out Eli Stowers in HS. Sarkisian and staff never took him seriously as a recruit either. You follow this stuff long enough, you can start to see the frauds at the high glamour positions based on these kinds of factors and others. No one as a paid person or as a fan gets all of it right, but sometimes things jump out. The regulars on the $9.95er board were happy to see Arnold go to OU and have enjoyed watching his overhype and collapse. The fact that his family strong-armed the Venables staff into letting Gabriel walk and anteing up more NIL was comical to watch. From the Arnold camp's end, the claim is that OU has paid Arnold over $1.5M over two years to be one of the biggest busts of all time. Venables is still talking like they're trying to make things work and get him into games, but that's mostly to offset the pressure from the okie boosters who are whining about ROI. The funny part will be when Arnold leaves and pulls his grift with another program for more NIL. I'm hoping it's like Auburn or FSU.

I think it is the opposite. We’re seeing better play across the board because of the portal and NIL. Now, neither of those things applies to Army or Navy. I think what you’re seeing with those two is that the QB play for both this year has been phenomenal and that is guiding their records as much as anything.

-2 more DTs and possibly a 3rd if it is the right one. -Top end LB or bust -Hilson and Terry are in unless something weird happened recently. -If they take K Johnson, it is strictly to piss on The Elk’s rug. They’re going to take a burner with numbers from the portal regardless. That’s allocated. -The 2026 S is reclassifying so they’re done after that position unless he screws something up late. -They might have to get obnoxious at CB and given that the competition is Oregon, Ohio State, Alabama and ATM, I have to assume they’d target Dijon Lee. This position remains a head scratcher. -Given that Terry is going to practice in the spring as though he’s Tyler Warren and one or both of the full time TBs are enrolling early, they’re unlikely to go after a portal TB unless he’s free and hungry. -At DT, it’s not so much about landing any single specific guy, and the market is set on what these guys will cost. Whichever guys mesh the best with the staff and want to come to Texas more than some other place, those will be the extra 2-3 guys with whom they close.

This is an excellent description of what they do, really. I read the Cale Gundy threads that pop up on Sooners Illustrated every time they face adversity. It’s bizarre. I would not give one fuck what Major Applewhite or Rod Wright cared to offer about what they think Texas is doing wrong, and both are far more accomplished than the lesser Gundy.

I didn’t know there was a thread. Both that and your tale are simultaneously amazing and alarming.

He was a high 4 star and he’s was on first team AA teams for 2023. Never been JAG, really. He was committed to Texas when Herman was here and then decommitted because his girl went to OU and Herman’s regime was in shambles. He then ran his mouth and shit talked Texas, even after Sarkisian got here and recruited him. He’s continued to run his mouth around the game each year. Also, talking about getting coached up and then winding up with Jay Valai as your position coach, well, you fucked around, now you’re finding out.

Well, I dig your pettiness. Fuck this guy and his bullshit from his recruitment 3 years ago.

I was once stuck on a plane at the gate in Las Vegas for two hours, awaiting takeoff. Ultimately, a horrific stench wafted through the entire fuselage, even making its way up to first class. The pilot explained that someone had done something horrific to the toilet in the back bathroom on the arriving flight and they were having to replace the entire thing. I have always just assumed it was one of those giant fatass aggies that can be seen on Rascals, just hauling their heaving masses from slot machine to slot machine while they smoke and breathe loudly.

1) Someone being wrong once doesn't make everything they post worthy of dismissal. Red Five has been around a hell of a lot longer than you have and he's a damned good poster. 2) I'm not even sure you've got the right poster in your comment.

Johnson Rubell will be playing a lot.

Two wins by one point against Rice and Gardner Webb and then a blowout win against ECU. On the losses end, blowout losses to JMU, North Carolina and Indiana. It's like they're two different teams. I'm assuming the shitty team shows up against Navy, of course.

He and Clemson have done a great job of beating the shit out of the team in front of them on the schedule after getting publicly buttfucked by Georgia. Now, the schedule has been dogshit and we haven't learned a whole lot about whether the improvements for Klubnik and Clemson are real or not, but they've done what they can. The rest of the schedule looks like more of a challenge, so I am interested in seeing if this continues.

I agree with the zen master approach, Gust.

I think it’s 4 out of 5. One is coming. I thought about OU, but just couldn’t muster the personal concern. One is coming for this week, though. I’ve outlined the whines and rebuttals in my head already.

Twitter is saying that Littrell has been fired and that Harrell has been promoted to QB coach. Anyone got anything more credible than a stream of okie twitter posts?

I rewound the play and you can literally hear the poor bastard’s leg snap during the play. It’s brutal.

Winsipedia tracks this as a relevant stat and will also show the dates in history in which the ranking occurred, for those interested in looking more closely.

This is the same fat-mouthed clown that spent all last week denigrating Hill and saying that OU needed to direct a lot of its offense directly at Hill. Strong work.

You don’t have a game breaker on offense and your team is going up against the best defense in the conference and probably the country. Outside of a short field via turnover or something on special teams, how exactly do you see your offense and Mike Bobo running up an early lead on the road that causes Texas to have to play catch-up?

Once I got to the front of the logjam, it was the fact that they only had two security lines. After that, they just wanted to see the tickets. It’s a shitshow and took forever but they thankfully weren’t actually scanning.