
SL Xpress
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Everything posted by SL Xpress
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Maybe? I'm not saying you're wrong, but those incompetent dorks ended up at LSU, Ohio State, and Alabama. It's not like A&M fired them. They just took better jobs, just like their best coaches do. Just like Trev Alberts will the first chance he gets. Is it worse that they keep getting the hire wrong, or that the wrong hire doesn't even want to stay there?
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College basketball coaching carousel: 2025 edition
SL Xpress replied to Machinator's topic in Basketball
My dream for A&M is Bruce Weber. -
In terms of my entertainment value it was the right thing to do, so I beg to differ.
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I know Liucci is in perpetual Baghdad Bob mode, but between Fisher, Schloss, and Williams/Beard, he's having to do overtime. Wait until they eventually hire someone and Liucci has to spin it as a better hire than Miller. And none of it matters, because if the guy wins he's going to leave, and if he loses - specifically compared to Miller - it's simply business as usual.
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Trev Alberts is still the biggest dumbfuck around.
SL Xpress replied to Fondren & Main's topic in Football
Beard was going to get a pay raise regardless. But A&M's interest allowed Beard to parlay that into a greater sense of urgency, and likely allowed Beard to negotiate a greater share of resources that otherwise probably would have gone to football. He's still gone the first time a bigger job comes along. And eventually a bigger job is going to come along. Just not A&M. Poor Aggies. -
All that I've known about Rodney Terry is that he's a person of respect. I think highly of him as a person. I've seen him be loyal to the people around him in environments where it would have been easier to say nothing. That's a shame people were making that kind of innuendo. I don't agree with it at all.
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The Leopards Eating Faces and Unlubed Dildo of Consequences Thread
SL Xpress replied to Horn Dog's topic in Cloak Room
I don't agree with any of that. Russia was always going to go with a strongman eventually. If it wasn't Putin, it would have been someone else. I don't know what Trump being a mastermind has to do with it. He communicates in a way that appeals to our basest instincts. I'm not sure what else is needed. China was already a swelling powerhouse. The time came for him to give up power and he chose not to. He used a campaign against corruption - a favorite of populists and dictators everywhere - to silence opposition. Any of the leaders before him could have done something similar. They chose not to, starting with Deng Xiaoping. I have no idea what point you're trying to make, actually. Maybe you're right, and Trump has his power curtailed in all kinds of ways. But what I'm seeing is a group of people in power who have no intention of giving it up, and a bunch of people who are willing to enable their behavior because they don't want to lose power and they naively believe they won't be next. -
My best guess is that eventually Congress gives an antitrust exemption to either the NCAA or whoever is running the top level college administration at that time. At some point it's going to be whoever gives the Big 10/SEC or an eventual merger between the two the most power. Then people will have to win cases without using the antitrust act, which is still possible, but that's the linchpin for all the lost cases that's destroyed the NCAA's ability to run college sports. But until then there are no guard rails, and there's too many actors with too much to gain for some kind of cabal to be able to stifle wage increases the way we see in other industries. NIL is also not governed by profit/loss concerns, but by the value placed on the emotional investment in seeing your alma mater win. That value is different depending on the individual, and how much of their net worth they're willing to spend. I don't think we've come even close to reaching a ceiling. I don't think we will until the system suffers some kind of collapse, although I'm uncertain what a collapse would look like. I just know we're not there yet. But we will be at some point. I don't think Congress is going to pass legislation until then. But maybe I'm wrong.
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I'm glad he's so classy. I'm also glad he's no longer the coach. It reminds me of how I felt about David McWilliams, who remains my favorite head football coach at Texas of all time. I don't hold Terry in the same regard, but I do like him as a person. Still glad he's gone.
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The Leopards Eating Faces and Unlubed Dildo of Consequences Thread
SL Xpress replied to Horn Dog's topic in Cloak Room
I honestly do not believe the conversation about a possible Trump 3rd term as all that important. For one, he's old. He's 78. He'll be 82 for the next election. 86 by the time that term is done. The chances of him dying or becoming otherwise incapacitated increase considerably with his every breath. If he has a serious fall, or he breathes in the wrong bacteria/virus, or some malignant cancer forms in a place that makes it difficult to force it go into remission, or he develops dementia, or dozens of other hypotheticals, this isn't going to matter. Two, for him to run for a third term is not going to mean smooth sailing until that occurs. He's already run roughshod over all kinds of institutional protections from doing so, but he's going to have to run over a lot more. He's going to have to get through the midterms. If the Democrats take control over either the House or Senate, the relationship with the legislative branch changes considerably. We're not going to suddenly get this test case of whether he successfully wins the election in 2028. We're going to have a myriad of test cases prior to that which becomes Rubicon moments of whether we really want to live in a Republic or not. While it feels like we're there already, at the end of the day if we held an election right now, I still think who people vote in would matter, just like it did in 2020, even with all the horseshit that ensued. To me the most important thing is what would lead up to him being able to run for a 3rd term. It's my belief we're on the precipice of losing the ability to decide who our leaders will be at the ballot box. That's going to be crystal clear whether it has occurred or not before 2028. How much are Republicans able to stifle any potential opposition vote? How much do they weaponize the executive branch, just like they're doing with Columbia University and the various law firms who have struck deals with the administration rather than going to the mat? Who do they investigate? Arrest? How well do they control the media? It's not clear how important controlling the mainstream media is any more, frankly. How well do they control the messaging at the places people are actually getting their news these days? How invested does the military become? And how much is dependent on Trump as the figurehead? How much of this cult of personality survives him? All of it? None of it? I just feel like there are underlying factors going on that are way more important than the specifics of whether Trump is able to run for a 3rd term or not. The polarization in this country is real, and it's increasing. We no longer want to know our neighbors. We are more solitary than we ever have been. We depend on echo chambers for discourse, mostly through online mediums. Whoever is able to successfully identify others that can be targeted, isolated, bullied, and either ghettoized, deported, jailed, or executed, is going to win in those environments. It doesn't have to be the next Hitler. It can be the next Robespierre, the next Lenin, Mao. "Those other guys have been the bad guys, and we're going to take care of it for you!" The biggest danger of Trump is he's helping to create an environment where the only way to win is to play his game. If you're not all in, he's going to beat you. But if you go all in, you become what you're fighting against. It takes a tremendous leader to both win that game, and then to give up power once they've won. There aren't that many examples in history, to be honest. Look at China. They had it for 40 years under a totalitarian regime that voluntarily gave up power every ten years until Xi Jingping came along. I don't actually know about an equivalent to that. Normally leaders are scared (rightfully) about what is going to happen to them if they cede power. The Romans used to do something similar by giving ultimate power to consuls during times of crisis. They expected the "dictators" to give up their power when the crisis passed. Which worked until it didn't. We don't understand how fragile our system is. We think 250 years is a long time and it's going to go on like this forever just because, when actually it very well may be a blip in human history. "Here are all the lessons to learn from the failed American Experiment, 1776 to 20xx" says future history books. -
I don't know any more than you do. If I was running the organization I would cast a wide net among players I felt like could improve the team. If there's some mutual interest, it's pennies on the dollar to bring them in. If I have my culture right, I wouldn't get too worked up about what they do to the dynamics, especially if I feel good about a kind of team first attitude they carry themselves with. I just don't have enough information to come to any conclusions. How much is budgeted for the Stanford kid? Does the staff have connections with him that make him an outlier? Is he motivated by factors beyond NIL where we can get him below market rate? Who knows? What I do like is that Sarkisian tends to lead with the school and the program, and get into NIL negotiations later on, whereas a lot of these schools with early commitments are leading with the big dollars, because they're desperate to make a splash. Sarkisian seems to have a really good handle on talent acquisition, which in many ways is the most important job for a college football coach. I found myself concerned early on. Even last year I gnashed my teeth a little bit as I wondered if we were going to be able to make a compelling enough late push. Now I find myself not worrying at all. If somehow we get a downfall in results I'll easily figure out a way to get back to worrying, but it just feels like Sarkisian has a really good strategy and vision for how he's going to go about all this. So if he wants to bring in the Stanford DE I'm not going to spend too much time thinking about the reasoning and just figure he knows what he's doing.
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While I certainly agree with you, I'm also reminded of all the times throughout human history when contemporaries felt like they were living in the end times, and it turned out not to be that way. Of course, sometimes it really was, at least from their perspective. It's inherently impossible to have genuine historical perspective on the times you're currently living in. Nonetheless, we can all see trends, and the trends do not feel very good right now. I think my biggest fear is we seem to be collectively leaning into the basest aspects of our humanity - especially in the United States - and I'm not sure what arrests that other than really negative outcomes. On a selfish level, I don't particularly want to live through those really negative outcomes. I hope for a George Washington/Thomas Jefferson/Abraham Lincoln/Teddy Roosevelt/FDR/Reagan type. I voted Republican all my life (for presidential elections) until 2016. Given where the party has gone, I don't see how someone like that wins the Republican nomination in the future, much less a general election. Honestly, at the foundational level my biggest fear is that in the near future our votes aren't going to matter any more.
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It wasn't very successfully done. After the US, the former Soviet Union, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel and South Africa developed nuclear weapons. South Africa, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine gave them up after possessing them. I'm saying countries have a lot of incentives to develop a nuclear weapon, and the disincentives are wholly inadequate. But adequate discincentives are likely horrifying.
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You say Iran is disingenuous, and I'd agree with you. But I'd argue everyone is disingenuous. The United States certainly is on all sorts of things. Sometimes purposefully, and sometimes by making promises they end up not having the political will to fulfill. How important is having possession of nuclear weapons for state sovereignty? What are the consequences to a ruling regime compared to the benefits? Why would we ever expect a nation state that has embarked on possessing nuclear weapons to genuinely give up that pursuit? If one doesn't want nuclear proliferation to occur then the only way to slow it down is to make the consequence for pursuing it so painful that it's unthinkable to do so. Since what I mean by that is abhorrent, we're left with a world where more people will have access to nuclear weapons. It would also be helpful if we'd do a better job of guaranteeing the sovereignty of countries that do give up possession of nuclear weapons.
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It's not sustainable. It's a bubble market and eventually it's going to burst. Just like all bubble markets. As a Texas fan it's nice to know we'll have a chair to sit in when the music stops, but it's bad for college athletics as a whole. The plan right now is on April 6 the court will approve something called the House Settlement, which says that schools can pay out NIL payments themselves, up to a maximum, for the entire athletic department. The initial cap is set at $20.5 million. I'm not going to get into all the details. There are tons of articles about it. But the bottom line for me is that the whole settlement has hair all over it. I do not see anyway it's anything but a stopgap measure for a very short time. In the meantime, NIL can be paid by other organizations, including collectives, but those payments allegedly must be at a market rate as determined by an algorithm monitored and enforced by Deloitte Touche. So there will be NIL payments outside the universities, but it's a little vague right now what they're going to look like. There's already legislation being considered in Oregon to completely abrogate any NIL limits the settlement puts forward in the state of Oregon. Shockingly, the University of Oregon with their Phil Knight dollars are pushing the legislation. Meanwhile, Oregon State, whose athletic program is now in a competitive limbo, is not quite as all on board over it. But there are better threads to carry on this conversation. It's a pertinent subject as the program looks to bring in transfers in the spring period. But it's easy for the conversation to take over, when there are NIL threads, there are recruiting threads, while this is the best thread to go to for information about spring practices. On another note, I've been following spring practice "reports" since Mackovic was a coach on the GoBig12 board, and I find them almost utterly useless. I'm not saying we don't get word of someone breaking out who then shows up during the season, but most of the time everyone somehow manages to look awesome even though with internal competition you'd think it would be a zero sum game inherently. And yet, as useless as I find them, I still read them. Just shove it into my veins already.
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Livingstonemania is upon us.
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Thank you. I live in Houston and gleefully tell people I still root against the Texans with all my might for not picking Vince. They think that's an extraordinary level of pettiness, and I joyfully agree with them. Unfortunately, the Texans appear to be getting their shit together. I also happen to like CJ Stroud, which really sucks. I still enjoy seeing the Texans lose.
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UT's next basketball coach - discussion/debate [Sean Miller Hired]
SL Xpress replied to alphahorn's topic in Basketball
You and I are saying the same thing. Which is why I don't agree that UT will have a limited NIL fund for the basketball roster. I'm saying some people seem to enjoy pretending that's going to be the case. I can't tell you how many articles I've read recently that talk about the unfair advantage the Big East is going to have because many of those programs don't field football teams so they can use all of their money on basketball if they want. All I can say is go tell Gerry Hamilton that. Well, I mean I can if I want to. All I'm saying is that's the message I'm responding to. You and I are on the same page. -
UT's next basketball coach - discussion/debate [Sean Miller Hired]
SL Xpress replied to alphahorn's topic in Basketball
There's a clear assumption that collegiate sports is going to be able to honor the so called cap on spending the House Settlement would provide if approved. Del Conte is saying the right things, "Texas is going to get out of the business of NIL and leave that to the corporate world who will be able to directly deal with athletes." Gerry is alluding to it here that Texas will have a limited men's basketball budget since the lion's share of the money will go to football. I don't believe any of this. Maybe it will last for a very short time but market forces are market forces and in this market players are going to be worth a lot more than what the House settlement is going to provide for, and I personally do not believe the enforcement mechanisms are going to either be adequate nor do I believe they're going to last. It's basically going to be up to each program to honor the House settlement to a degree I do not for one second believe all the institutions as an aggregate are going to comply with. I do not know how quickly UT as a stakeholder - and that's not just the administration, but the alumni base and the assorted people who have taken the initiative on NIL in ways I have been sitting on my butt - begins supplementing the pay from the school, but I have no doubt it will come about at some point. But we'll collectively pretend the House settlement is going to stick, and for the amount of time it sticks it will create challenges to what kind of line up Miller can employ. That much is true. -
What are your thoughts on the hire, Pancho? Say, on a scale of 1-10? I'm somewhere around an 8+. Not that you asked!
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UT's next basketball coach - discussion/debate [Sean Miller Hired]
SL Xpress replied to alphahorn's topic in Basketball
I think people can say that. I think it would be silly. We've never won a championship in men's basketball. IMO it's the hardest collegiate sport of them all to win a championship. Would I be frustrated if we made multiple Final Fours but couldn't win the whole thing? Yes, if I'm being realistic about myself, yes I would. But I certainly wouldn't think of the coaching regime as a bust. If Miller is successful enough to take us to multiple Final Fours, there's a decent shot I don't live long enough to see who comes after him. And I'd be fine with that. Ultimately I'd be very satisfied as a Texas basketball fan if that was my lot in life. Of course, we're going to see seismic changes in the collegiate athletics landscape over that course of time, so who knows what the future portends. There's a lot of money in that tournament. If the NCAA can't figure out a way to ensure its (as in the NCAA's, not the tournamet's) continued existence, another organization is going to try to take the tournament over. Specifically, an organization even more centered around the Big 10 and SEC than the NCAA currently is. -
One good tight end that NO ONE recognized as a good tight end entering the season.
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That's a left hand/right hand sort of thing. One group of people were trying to bring Saban in. They lost. The whole process disgusted Saban so much he counseled Sarkisian not to take the job.
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