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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. Not really. He had no say in the hiring of Charlie Strong or Tom Herman. Those guys were going to fail regardless. That's not on Mack Brown. Unless you're saying he's the reason Saban wasn't able to take the job. Because while he wasn't the only reason, he was the biggest.
  2. And then he acted like he'd solved college football. He got lazy on the recruiting trail. He refused to give high school assistants gas money to bring their players to Austin at a time when other schools were paying them $500 to $1000. Never mind trainers and other hanger ons. He wouldn't let his assistants leave the Austin area during the football season, so the only high schools they could visit were in the Hill Country, when all the talent is in DFW and Houston. He told Muschamp he was stepping down after the 2009 season and then didn't. He cock blocked Saban, making sure he didn't resign until after Saban signed the contract for Alabama that had been sitting on his desk unsigned. At a time when programs were first starting to pay players and their families for unlimited "unofficial" visits Mack refused to extend any offers until summer camps. Then he'd take early bread as part of his strategy to build momentum. Then he'd take bread at the end of the recruiting cycle because he'd already lost on a lot of top targets. Then the recruiting services would overrate the players Texas was taking because of the name. You give him credit for the national championship. Heck, he came close to winning two if not for Colt's injury. But the truth is he and Greg Davis almost successfully ruined Vince Young by trying to alter his throwing motion and have him line up under center virtually every snap. It wasn't until after the Missouri game in 2004 - after that embarrassing shutout to OU - and the uninspired play versus the Tigers, that Ray Seals, VY's high school coach, came to Austin and read Mack Brown the riot act for not putting VY in the shotgun and running zone read. So yes, Mack Brown gets the credit. He should. But in many ways he succeeded in spite of himself. The real credit from me isn't the national championship or the 10 win seasons or the bowl victories. It was rescuing Texas football from an institutional apathy. Because I'm not sure someone other than Mack Brown and his particular set of gifts could have done it nearly as well. This was a guy who convinced the North Carolina faithful to pony up for what at the time was the Taj Mahal of athletic centers, at North Carolina of all places, while he was going 1-10 for two consecutive seasons to start his tenure. There is no question the guy could sell ice to the Eskimos.
  3. No one compared Hawaii to Galveston. I compared the Gulf Coast to Lake Michigan. And I wasn't thinking of Galveston when I said that.
  4. He's complicated. In some ways he was the savior of the program, and then he lived long enough to become the villain. He should have stepped down after 2009. The only problem with that is we might have hired him back like North Carolina did. At least we got as clean a break from him as is possible under the circumstances. I know he's vulturing around now, but he's not the head coach. That would have been an even bigger disaster than 2010-13.
  5. Well, better and worse. George Mitchell is the one who should get the credit for turning it around. That guy was instrumental in the development of The Woodlands, revitalizing Galveston, and the development of fracking. For a normal person any one of those would have been plenty to hang their hat on. But my sadness upon his death mostly revolved around Galveston. They used to say Galveston was all about the three Ms - Mitchell, Moody, and Mafia. The disparity in income has always seemed like one of the worst in the state, though, for such a small place. There was a time when Galveston Ball was an NFL factory. Now most of the athletes in the area move to other school districts. But the poverty is still there. Then you have the ultra rich there, too. It's a strange place in many ways. Not sure how this is related to recruiting. But my middle name is Tangent. In any case, I would deny to Malakai's family that Galveston even exists. As far as they're concerned, the Gulf starts in Corpus Christi and then heads south to South Padre.
  6. I'm heading down there today to spend a couple of days with my daughter, and we're going to have a blast. I love Galveston. Fuck all you haters.
  7. Just to circle back, I wonder what Lake Michigan was like on that day.
  8. It is to everyone. I grew up with it, so my shock was my first vacation to Florida and I could actually see the ground below the water. "What is this wizardry?" I thought it was normal to have something rub against your leg on a regular basis and not know if it was seaweed, a jellyfish, or a shark. One of God's many mysteries!
  9. You just have to go far enough south. The brown water is the silt from the Mississippi River. It clears up around Corpus Christi. But sure. Galveston is going to be a shock. No question. I'm just glad you apologized first.
  10. The avoidance of mentioning Texas, specifically when referencing Turntine's recruitment, is so delicious. Well, peak roller coasting was Jimbo. I'm not sure Elko has the same potential. But Aggie is Aggie, so roller coasting is exactly what they're going to do. See baseball this year.
  11. I realize Austin isn't exactly next to the Gulf Coast, but if coming from Hawaii they feel themselves hankering for the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean, Lake Michigan is going to be as much of a shock as the weather overall. At least once you make it to the Gulf of Mexico the water is going to feel a lot more like Hawaii than anything remotely close to Ann Arbor. And you can always hit up one of the nearby lakes. I'm not trying to suggest it's the same as Hawaii, but it's a darn sight closer than anything Michigan has to offer. Also, I wish we'd just set up an academy in the South Pacific islands and the west coast of Africa. For linemen especially. Oh, and for recruiting purposes, encourage a large Mormon population to relocate the Hill Country. I swear The Church of Latter Day Saints has converted every talented Tongan and Samoan football player on the planet. When Gerry says Malakai Lee has family in the DFW area, dollars to donuts it's Euless.
  12. Saban told him to be wary of the job. Saban's personal experience with one group at Texas trying to hire him while another group successfully cock blocked the hire caused him to caution Sarkisian on the difficulties of getting everyone on the same page. Sarkisian should get a lot of credit for the turnaround, but having the support of Eltife and Del Conte, and having everyone aligned has been extremely helpful. Along with outside groups taking initiative with NIL even while the athletic department was uncooperative. It's been a team effort. But if the coach isn't the right fit, then none of the rest of it matters. It feels great to have the right fit in place. Along with you, I had a lot of question marks, and the first two seasons sure helped to support that. There are a lot of favorite parts of this interview, but one of the big ones that helped change my perspective was going over Carroll's history prior to USC, his first year there, then Saban's coaching history prior to taking the Alabama job, and his first year there. I knew Carroll was a lucky win for USC as a coach. Mike Garrett was a terrible AD for USC. No one wanted to work for him. They kept striking out on candidate after candidate. Then Carroll threw his name into the ring and Garrett grabbed at it like a drowning man lunges for a piece of driftwood. Saban coming out of Miami was a huge can't miss hire for Alabama, though. No one realized how dominant he'd actually be - how could we? - but everyone knew he'd be great. When LSU hired him it wasn't that obvious, but he'd done some good things at Michigan State. But I feel like I didn't have as good a perspective for Sarkisian's outlook until he went over the respective careers of his great mentors like he did. I also loved him talking about sitting down with Monte Kiffin when he was at USC with Lane Kiffin on staff. Or talking about the coaching trees out of Mike Holmgren on one hand and Mike Shanahan on the other. And any time Kyle Shanahan's name is brought up I always think about how he came to Texas because he wanted to learn offensive scheme and philosophy from Mack Brown and Greg Davis. It's like something out of Ripley's Believe It or Not.
  13. I guess I just feel like that 10 year span was the aberration. Not what's happening now. When I first started following Texas football we churned out great defensive tackles like Hallmark spits out Christmas movies. Shearer, McMichael, Sims. There were always playmakers in the interior defensive line. Jeter and Patton years later. And of course under Mack Brown in the first part of his tenure. The shocking thing to me is how few of these recruits are Texas high school players. To me that's the sea change this year. I always felt like we could do this if we would have ever made the effort. We've never made this kind of effort before. A lot of factors involved. The feeling we didn't have to. Maintaining great relationships with the Texas high school football coaches. Choosing to go after low hanging fruit rather than the challenge of out of state recruiting. Not building connections out of state. It helps that the size of the football staff has practically doubled. Texas has just never shown this kind of interest in out of state recruiting. And the kids they're bringing in aren't aware of how awesome Austin is. There are a lot of arrows in the quiver. NIL. Sarkisian's approach. Success in the draft. Post season success. The prestige of UT as a public school. And those have some barriers to entry about them. But Austin as a combination big city/college town is a true unicorn. I feel like Sarkisian is bound and determined to utilize all of the advantages Texas football has to offer.
  14. The inference was they're announcing to Texas.
  15. We'll get her as a transfer.
  16. Yes. That's their role. But there's a greater sense of ownership in the SEC. "They're our clowns." The dynamics were different in the SWC, especially with 4 private schools. But they were definitely the outliers there. In the Big 12, they didn't really fit the midwestern vibes of that conference. I'd argue in the SEC they fit right in as the resident weirdos. East Texas has more in common culturally with the rest of the SEC than it does West, South, or Panhandle Texas. Watch how they're portrayed in SEC Shorts, for example. They're constantly being made fun of, but it's not mean spirited. The Aggies love the way they're portrayed on there. I love how we're portrayed, too. But the overall sense on both SEC Shorts and Matt Mitchell's videos - along with the message boards and social media content - is that Texas thinks we're better than everyone else. Which we do. Because we are. If you want to look at a school that no one seems to understand why they're even in the SEC, that school is Missouri.
  17. I'd argue they're more embraced by their fellow hicks in SEC land than they ever were in the Big 12. It helps they don't win consistently so they're not viewed as a serious threat. Every good story needs a good villain. We're well on our way to being that villain for the SEC. It makes me so happy. I embrace my inner Sauron. Every good story needs a jester/clown. A&M fits that role perfectly. If SEC football was a midget tossing contest, A&M would be the midget. l always love that .gif from American Hustle produced around the time it was announced OU and UT were joining the SEC, with Bradley Cooper as Texas and Louis CK as A&M.
  18. Wut? I guess that's literally true, but that's it. It's not like his "true calling" is to be a quarterback but they want him to play cornerback for a year. Moving from cornerback to safety happens all the time. There are even instances of extremely talented players moving from safety to cornerback, although less often. This is a dumb take.
  19. Sean Miller wasn't that blunt, but he also stated he didn't know that much about Austin before he was hired and was shocked by its awesomeness. I mean, we see quotes from players along those lines all the time. In state players aren't really shocked by Austin. For them, It's Austin. But out of state players often expect a typical college town. Not a rapidly growing 2.5 million strong metropolis with the school right smack dab in the middle of it, with no major professional teams.
  20. This isn't specifically about recruiting, but it's basically a 45 minute recruiting pitch on why players should come play football at Texas. And it's awesome:
  21. Thread title: Texas Recruiting Notes 2026: They Can't Keep Getting Away With This
  22. I like Wisner. But he's not an elite running back. I'd prefer an elite running back. I'm still grateful to him, even if I'd like to see an upgrade at the position.
  23. Or in the SEC championship game? Honestly, the rushing attack was hit or miss all season long. Not just against Georgia. I'm hopeful it will be better this year with different personnel. But the strength of that offensive line was pass protection, and outside of the first half in Austin, I feel like they held their own against Georgia. Not always perfect, but certainly not manhandled. Ewers had some plays where he had to be the one to account for the blitzer, and he didn't. He also always had a tendency to run into the pocket in a way that caused the sack, where a different quarterback would have done a better job of extending the play. It's the recruiting thread. I've carried on this discussion too long already with a known contrarian. I find your parroting of an ignorant Florida fan as imbecilic. I've laid out my reasons why, not for your benefit, because you're something of a lost cause, but as a response for the rest of the board that this take is dumb. It's especially dumb regarding the defensive line. Going on to talk about the offensive line is out of context, but it's what you have to work with.
  24. So is Tre Wisner. But as a Texas fan we should know what a high level running back looks like. We've had a ton of them. Neither Tre Wisner nor Hodges Mitchell are one of them.
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