Worked for JT Sanders too in the sense that he was designated athlete, but I’d srgue that’s different because he was an athlete bc he had 2 positional fits that were clean- one on offense and one on defense and a fist fight over who got him in their room. That’s different than the “this guy is athletic but we don’t know that he has any traits where he’s going to succeed guy”. Also- a problem with “athlete” in today’s CFB world is when those guys do develop it often comes late. When guys aren’t on a clear track now it seems they are bigger portal risks. I’d guess in the new world you don’t have many guys stay for year 3 and 4 that haven’t made a decent sized impact on the field by year two. The clock starts ticking earlier than it ever has on guys now.
We have the same dude. He’s named Michael Terry. I’m generally skeptical of “athlete”. Doesn’t mean it never works, but it’s probably a higher than average bust rate.
Sometimes failure teaches lessons. He was coming off 2 times in a row of making the final four. Now that he’s failed he might redesign the process. Total trust? No. Feel like it’s trending in a positive direction? Yes. 3 weeks and we will know. Really probably 10 days will tell the tale.
I mean, yeah. This offseason we can see if he’s going to get to Saban and Meyer type levels or not. I maintain that if he doesn’t it will probably fall apart eventually and probably sooner than you think bc it’s hard to be really good for a long time without winning it all- things tend to stagnate and then you have a Penn State with Franklin moment coming, but what he’s done right now through 5 years absolutely is just fine under any reasonable standard.
Honestly? I don’t think so. I think it’s best player/ceiling available with Dana, we just happened to pick high enough this year that that dude didn’t have awful swing and miss to him.
Ok. I will go back to being happy then of you haven’t reviewed the plan and view it to suck. Bobby and the other 9.95 guys seem to be talking like the plan is to let anyone not key and awesome fuck off and recruit over them in the portal, which I like. If they’ve misread the tea leaves that’s obviously a disaster bc you are losing floor setters right now. You can’t pay for floor setters and expect to win it all though, imo. “Maxwell” never looked good. That was a bad spend from the word go.
Well fuck. I said I’d make you GM and I meant it. Now I’m going tO go ahead and panic and just assume Steven and 5 Is checked out and we will lose everyone and add JAG’s. Merry Xmas asshole. But seriously, is this just you being dark or is there really not a plan? That seems almost impossible to fathom in an offseason where you replace a top 10 DC with a better guy. Sark killed his first offseason here after 5-7 and it made me think he was going to do well here. If he kills this offseason we are probably off and running to multiple titles or at least peak Mack Brown era success cycle. If he doesn’t nail this offseason we will know by 1/17 and can start measuring the coffin then. Have you seen me post about Ut hoops in 5 years? Did you see me post about David Pearce baseball team? Yeah, no, bc I am not a pumper. If this off-season gets fucked I think Sark knows it isn’t ever going to happen. That kind of thing can motivate a guy. No need to panic until it actually gets fucked up.
Ha. I’m not actually a rampant optimist I’m a contrarian and against majority opinion. It’s just everyone on here is so pessimistic it brings out the optimist in me. My mom has called me Eyeore since I was a little kid. Shes always talking about making lemonade and other positive and happy shit.
I also said probably. I would say that was right but we got placed behind byu so, I guess, there was no way this committee was ever going to put us in.
Could it all go to shit? Sure. But the Muschamp hire is great and an awesome data point that we aren’t fucking around and we got this and understand the parameters of the game now. I’m going to choose to be gruntled and optimistic right now and save panic until at least 1/10/2026.
I mean, I think as fans of we had to nominate someone from this board to be a GM we’d want it to be CTJ and that would be bc he’s at least a borderline sociopath, right? Anyone analytical that can rip the bandaid off. Every bit of attrition we’ve seen so far is ripping the band aid off and we will be better absolutely everywhere we’ve seen attrition as compared to if we decided to “pay them what they want”. DC is also a huge step that direction. I thought Sark could succeed bc he’s got a lot he does well and Texas has a lot of advantages. I never dreamed he’d make this kind of turn as a GM type 5 years in. It’s pretty exiting
Have any of you that regret any of our guys going into the portal ever managed people? It feels like you haven’t. The biggest mistake, by far, I’ve ever made in my career managing ~100 people is letting sentiment get in the way and trying to work around and scaffold Rube Goldberg machines to try to make substandard people as productive as I need or want them to be, rather than have honest and difficult conversations and just do the things that need to be done to make the organization better. There is a reason that sociopaths like Meyer and Saban have so much success playing checkers, while most human beings do stupid stuff like pay Tre or LL and try to (usually unsuccessfully) mitigate their weaknesses. Maybe Sark got some balls and is acting ruthless and they got shoved out the door, or maybe he just got lucky that in resetting their actual market value nature took its course, but we will be so much better if this continues to happen as a college football have. We have resource advantages over almost everyone. If we combine that with ruthlessly accurate decision making we won’t fail to succeed. My shitty management instincts always got in the way of me making anything I had control over excellent. Instead, I had enough positive traits I could improve where I was at bc I have some inherent talent for big picture strategy and goal setting and direction, but it wasn’t like I was great at anything I did because of these failings. I didn’t start having lots of success in my career until I started managing nobody under me (not even managing myself) and just doing what I was good at. Then, I ended up in the top 100 nationally in my career. Texas is absolutely capable of squandering all our financial and resource advantages. It looks like we won’t. Celebrate. And I will say this if a certain WR moves on as well. All hail creative destruction.
I mean- maybe. I’ve never had an employee with a non-compete. Figure it’s my job to make the workplace work for them and if I can’t or they suck attrition can be magical.
I’m not saying it’s preordained and can’t happen. It’s just what I believe is most likely to happen one way or another. I think 2026 is a massive pivot point for the program.