Askew

Is one of the sidelines going to be a darker shade or is that an optical illusion?

This is incorrect and part of the revisionist fabrication that Gerry and IT are using to cover their ass. Here's the breakdown: 1) Gerry and IT say that Texas is feeling very confident in Williams, Hutson, Robertson, Banks, Campbell. So confident that they may not have space for Sexton. 2) Poster asks whether this has been relayed to Sexton. Gerry responds that "it is known" by the Sexton side and elaborates that the staff views Williams as the take over Sexton. I.e., we are full at OT. 3) The 'Williams over Sexton' theory gets cemented all throughout last week and into the Williams decision. The posters are now frothing at the mouth at the possibility of that OL class. The 'Sexton was told no' story really gets the posters believing that that OL class is happening for sure. How could the staff tell Sexton no if they arent confident? 4) Williams spurns Texas and people start to question the Sexton story. 5) Banks looks like he will spurn Texas. One poster now posits that the staff 'probably sees Sexton as an OG and redundant with Robertson/Hutson.' Gerry replies "this is it." 6) Now Gerry and the rest of IT are running with the theory that it was actually 'Hutson/Robertson over Sexton' the entire time, and that their intel was credible. So, Gerry spins a yarn that the staff is super confident. He cements that yarn with the 'Sexton told no' story. Williams and Banks go elsewhere and now either Gerry's story looks like bullshit or the staff looks stupid. Gerry adopts a revisionist theory to clean up for both sides. Regardless, we need to hit on some OTs.

The recruiting talk is such a great microcosm of the trajectory of the collective psyche of the message boards this week: 1) Shrillest parts of the board freak out when Brooks and Thompson spurn Texas. 2) Reasonable parts of the board come in––represented by the podcast––with reasonable takes on Wednesday: "Brooks was never coming here; Thompson is a nobody––not that butthurt about it! Don't care anyway got Jamarion. Guess what, everyone RELAX were getting 3/5ths of our OL class done in the next two days." With the last sentence stated so matter-of-factly that keen or psych-educated onlookers would detect an underlying bit of self-hugging going on for mental preservation. 3) Williams spurns Texas. Reasonable parts of the board give in and ABSOLUTE MELTDOWN ensues. Even the most stoic have a draft comment along the lines of 'starting to lose faith in the coaching staff' waiting as they F5 the prospects thread. 4) Hutson and Robertson commits barely register as a win given our rattled mental state, but just enough to keep everyone from jumping as we limp into the holiday.

For anyone that wants to get caught up with a TLDR: these were the culmination of the last time @ShowMeALoss wandered in. Second one...accurate

Love that PK is in there chopping it up with the offensive guys.

This is the point I was making, and the reason for Big 12 expansion. Our league is capped out at 3 teams that can have 10 wins each year. While we argue whether we can get 2 and maybeee 3 teams in, the Big 10 and SEC are wondering whether they can get 3, 4 or even 5 in. Neither conference is ever going to say "it's going to be dicey for the 2nd place team to get in." One reason is they win their OOC gams, but the main reason is they have more available wins in conference. If we want to talk about increasing the money and eyeballs that flow to the Big 12, it needs to start with the positive impact of multiple teams making the CFP, and what that does to the schedule the next year. We want to play as many "big time games" as possible each year, and that conversation will soon be dominated by which teams are always in the top-12.

First off, hold your horses--we literally cannot play fewer conference games right now. It's a 10-team conference round robin. We either expand or continue 9 games. Second, youre misunderstanding my point a bit. I'm not saying bring in bad teams. I'm saying bring in teams. Hopefully that would mean 2-4 of Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Mizzou, Arizona, Arizona St. And I pointed out the zero-sum problem in my post. The Big 12 has that the worst of any conference right now. But cross-division games are almost like an OOC. Bama playing Vandy assures them a win, and the SEC West doesn't otherwise take a loss. So the SEC West teams that Bama plays all year are all ranked better. There can be years where Bama, Auburn, and LSU are all 10-win teams, along with Florida and Georgia in the east. Same thing goes in the Big 10. Ohio St, Michigan, Penn st, Wisconsin, Iowa all magically find themselves around 10 wins. It's literally not possible in the Big 12. There arent enough available wins in the round robin format. It's fine if the goal is get one team to the CFP. It sucks if you want more top-15 teams.

Couple of thoughts: 1) Big12 currently has the most ideal path to get one team into the CFP (1st and 2nd best team always play in CCG--winner will almost always go to CFP with that big win). In 2-division leagues, a weak division winner can win the CCG and knock out the #1 team; or a tough division can cannibalize itself (Pac 12). 2) But Big 12 has the worst ability to have multiple top-12 teams. Round robin play is zero sum. Cross-divisional wins can really bump up the resumes of teams--think of a year where Bama and LSU both play eg Vandy. Bama and LSU both get an extra win, and none of the other SEC West teams take a loss. Relative rankings bump for all involved. 3) If 12-team playoff goes through, BIG 12 needs to immediately expand to get increase the available wins in conference, 10 wins looks like the magic number. Big 12 maxes out at about 3 10-win teams. The 14-team conferences max out at about 5 10-win teams. 4) The first-round hosting/2nd-round bowls is actually a great way to quasi-punish the top teams. All of the lower seeds get some amazing program exposure, top teams get a bye but no exposure. Kind of like the NFL draft. Here's a slight variation to 12-team I would really want to see: -First round is the NY6 Bowls. The 6 conference winners get the same bowl every year for tradition (Rose Bowl for Pac 12, Sugar for SEC, Cotton at Jerryworld for Big 12, Orange for ACC, etc). Conference winners play the six at-large. -NY 6 determines the seeding. Makes for interesting debate. Top-2 teams have a bye. Next 4 teams play the quarterfinals. 2 highest seeds host. This would eliminate any chance a Cincinnati ever hosts a game, unless it's a cinderella story which would make it awesome atmosphere. -The 2 previous Bye teams host the semis. -Championship at a neutral site. BUT hosting will work best in the first round when students are on campus, so this won't really work that well in practice.

Wonder what the presentation to recruits is for the SEZ while it's still under construction. These athlete facilities and offices have to be getting close to finished if CDC is saying August is still the target completion date. Can't wait to see the finished product and hear the reaction from recruits/players.

Absolutely huge. Could easily be our RB2 and add a consistent explosive element our offense lacks. Good. If Roschon keeps his spot, KR will push him, raise the level of competition, and still add a change of pace back. Great. No longer have to hold our breath that Watson or Young might have to play. Strong 3-man rotation. Amazing.

What would your expectation of Herman have been for this upcoming year if he was retained? My expectation was nothing short of 10 wins and CCG appearance. No excuses. That was assuming the same NFL draft departures. We didn't lose any our core to the transfer portal. Very little attrition. My expectation hasn't really changed with the new coach. Roster has 9+ wins in it.

Assuming the public reason for Blue's opt out is true (save his body), isn't it the case that a lot of peoples' worries on here would be mitigated if the underlying problem was fixed? I.e., the NCAA being greedy twats? A lot of people are concerned that Blue opting out is a me-first mindset that will lead to him opting out of bowl games or even his entire junior year, to get to the NFL. But isnt this purely a money problem? If NIL goes through: at the broadest level, a player's overall career will factor heavily into their immediate earnings from NIL. So if youre a guy who is good enough to make opting out of senior year sound beneficial, you'd probably be earning enough from NIL to balance those incentives out. At a more particular level, this would remove the incentive to opt out of bowl games as well. Think about how much Sam Ehlinger could make off selling an NFT of one of his rushing TDs in the Sugar Bowl? Hell, Vince could easily have made a couple million off NIL if he came back for a fourth year. Boosters would just funnel money into his NIL ventures. Once those income streams start getting developed, it starts to make a lot more sense for a player to bask in the placid waters of college and rake in that passive income.

I think you have this kind of right, but also wrong. I'll call it the Herman Corollary: If your top target is gone, then you need a strong contingency. BUT if your strong contingency is gone, then NEVER reach for bodies. This means that we dont have much dead weight, but also holes in the roster at RB (refused to reach in 2019, 2020 after TY Jordan decommitted), LB (refused to reach in 2018, or 2020 other than Ford), DE/Edge (refused to reach in 2019, 2020 after Van F decommitted), TE (refused to reach in 2018 only offered 6 and got Epps, 2020 only offer 4 got none).

I believe CTJ has a great writeup on Clemson's decade of OL adequacy on here somewhere.

Ladies and gentleman suffering from OCD, they finally did it--took out the goalposts for our viewing pleasure. They're probably getting ready to replace the turf.

Does anyone know why this is happening? If I recall FCB put out a story first week of spring that the players were "soft." But dont know of any other particular reason, other than FCB's general ineptitude/stupidity, that Sark would repeatedly ice him out like this. Also, I kind of like the idea of FCB getting emasculated, but I feel that at some point it gets disrespectful to the fans to be shooting the messenger like this. I want to hear the answers to these questions. It's not like FCB's questions have been totally obtuse.

You're not a realist, you're a whiny halfwit. Even worse, you're lazy. Since giving an informed opinion is too difficult for you, I'm going to have to take some of my life attempting to fill your black hole of ignorance. As TARS can probably tell you better than me, trying to fill a black hole is a complete waste of time. That's an Interstellar joke, try to keep up. Anywho...can you tell me the first kid to commit to Herman? I'll assume not. That would be Byron Vaughns on April 7, 2017. Can you tell me what Herman's class looked like on April 25, 2017 (at which point new coaches worth their salt are experiencing an astounding level of momentum)? Casey Thompson, Cam Rising, Reese Moore, Byron Vaughns.That's good for a .90 average. Highest rated guy wouldn't even break the top-5 in our current class. 2nd-highest rated guy would only beat out 3-star Trevell Johnson. Earthshattering levels of momentum for Mensa. If you want to argue it's better to have a shitty class (as then-rated) all commit in April, rather than a good class all commit in February, be my guest, but that's a dumb argument.

What Vito said. He's leaner. His waist is smaller so it makes him look bigger. He may have gained a few pounds of muscle, but he's 4 pounds lighter overall. 227 --> 224 I believe.

Looking more and more like we are going to start 4 of the 5 staters from last year. Kerstetter, Angilau, Okafor, Jones. Which means that coaching and scheme was the problem last year. If the OL can learn to pick up stunts at merely an average level, the unit as a whole will be exponentially better. Last year, I picture the OL asking Hand, "coach, how do we handle a stunt?" And Hand probably hearing: "coach, how do we handle a steak?" and then excitedly going into grilling methods and his possible invention of the 'Grill Hands' for the right grip (tm). I'm sure Hand was extra hungry during OU week, during which our OL play reached crisis levels.

It's not really about the pads/gear. It's about game situation vs track situation. Some guys just loosen up and run faster in a game. So the poster above who said the mph gauges will be the new normal, rather than the 40, is the most correct. Take the measurements from game situations, combine with 40 times, profit.

Tin foil hat time: multiple sites are quoting Okafor in his media availability, saying that 'Casey is getting most of the reps with the 1's.' The media availability video is edited at 1:31 and that quote is cut out...

Tyler Owens really auditioning for the LB role with that gem of an arm tackle.

Bijan is a specimen. Really nice throw by Casey at the end.

I also like Cliff Curtis because--setting aside Training Day being a top-10 movie--I like to think of the bathroom scene as a tidy little metaphor for Sark running Herman out of town.

Are we still doing look-alikes?