NCAA Football 2013-2014 discussion

Holy cow: Tennessee Athletic Department $200M in debt, with interest payments grabbing $21M a year!

firesloth wrote:

Holy cow: Tennessee Athletic Department $200M in debt, with interest payments grabbing $21M a year!

That's nothing compared to the country they're based in!

Fedaykin98 wrote:
firesloth wrote:

Holy cow: Tennessee Athletic Department $200M in debt, with interest payments grabbing $21M a year!

That's nothing compared to the country they're based in!

Yeah, but they have no central bank or treasury. They can't print money...they can only make more moonshine!

Is that what happens when you pay 3 coaches at once?

Stele wrote:

Is that what happens when you pay 3 coaches at once? :?

Yes, and their assistants. But also when you spend a lot on a stadium and then lose a lot of games.

*Legion* wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

I would love that to be true, but I'd happily bet $100 that he does not play three more years. Lots of chatter about him in the NFL.

At this point, it's empty chatter. No scout will spend a second of time looking at his tape for at least another year. The only people chattering are ones who don't make personnel calls.

I think it is highly likely that, even if Manziel explores the idea of coming out early, when he submits himself for consideration to the NFL Draft Advisory Board and hears what their evaluation is, he'll reconsider. Much like Tebow did.

Johnny Football needs to learn to stop throwing off his back foot.

Less than a week before national signing day, and while Cal's class will never be world beaters, as of this minute its shaping up to be a top-25'ish class. There's been a very strong emphasis on our most glaring hole our offensive line.

There are 2 verbals to Cal who are getting pushed hard by Oregon and are going to wait until NSD to go official. One of them, OL Cameron Hunt is a 4-star lineman who I'm hoping sticks. The other, LB Johnny Ragin III (best name in footall?) is also considering Oregon.

Of interesting note, Cal actually "de-committed" to a Tedford recruit because of academic concerns. I want to win as much as anyone else, but a move like this really speaks to the type of program Sonny Dykes is trying to build here at Cal. If this kid wasn't going to cut it at Cal in the classroom, then I'm all for letting him go. In a similar development, one of our LB recruits, Victor Egu actually flipped to (wait for it...) Yale! I dont' think Ivy gives football scholarships so if this kid was bright enough to get into Yale and wants to pursue an Ivy league education good for him. I'd argue that the education at Cal would be even better AND you could be in D1A football, but I'm not going to hold anything against someone changing their mind for academic reasons.

I'm SUPER excited for NSD next Wednesday!

Can anyone explain to me the recruiting class that Ole Miss is putting together?

I know Nkemdiche's brother is already on the team but does his potential presence really lure these other 5 stars that are rumored to be signing with the Rebels?

Hey, man, these kids are all just really big fans of The Blind Side.

Heh. Yeah, I guess Sandra Bulock's milkshake really brings the boys to the grove.

I admit, I only really noticed what the Rebs were building when a long time 5 start O lineman who was long considered to be a toss up between UGA & Bama, became a heavy lean to Ole Miss after one last minute visit.

After some digging, it looks like Ole Miss offered his girlfriend/fiancee a ” scholarship.”

Also, The Blind Side makes Hugh Freeze look like the combination genius/player's coach all kids dream about playing for.

In other news: Only two days to NSD!

Ugh, our best OL recruit, Cameron Hunt, has flipped to Oregon. Some sources had him as high as the #18 OL in the country and he would have been our best recruit this year.

Carlbear95 wrote:

Ugh, our best OL recruit, Cameron Hunt, has flipped to Oregon. Some sources had him as high as the #18 OL in the country and he would have been our best recruit this year.

They're bastards when they do that!

Nothing wrong when they flip TO my team, mind you.

Texas A&M has had a couple last-minute defections in the last few years, so I feel your pain. One of them actually started for Oregon as a true freshman this past year.

Yeah in the last two weeks I have seen Louisville flip one commit from Ole Miss, lose one to USF, and flip another from USF. Supposedly.

It's hard to know anything for sure until Wed. These things are always in flux.

But I do hope to watch the signing day stuff streaming on ESPN3. They had it last year. I hope that they haven't changed it to not let you watch it if you don't have ESPNU, as they have done with a lot of games this year.

EDIT: Yeah looks like the 730am National Signing Day has a listing for ESPN3 with no access verification required. http://espn.go.com/watchespn/index#t...

I won't be able to watch TV, as this doesn't come near the top of the list of fun things I'd like to randomly take off work for (watching World Cup games ranks very highly, for instance).

That said, I'll be following it closely and I expect to get very little done at work that morning.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Also, The Blind Side makes Hugh Freeze look like the combination genius/player's coach all kids dream about playing for.

In other news: Only two days to NSD!

Wait... what coach was Hugh Freeze represented by in the Blind Side? The goofy head coach? If so, I hope he was he better portrayed in the book...

Yes, Hugh Freeze was Michael Oher's high school coach. He was hired by Ole Miss in one of those "coincidences" of the world of recruiting.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Yes, Hugh Freeze was Michael Oher's high school coach. He was hired by Ole Miss in one of those "coincidences" of the world of recruiting.

To be fair, if you had grabbed a talent like Oher who also implied significant coaching challenges (at least at the time), you'd be happy to bring on the man that had learned how to coach him.

But, yes, there are lots of these coincidences...like girlfriends, sisters, brothers, and best friends getting scholarship offers.

I very pleased with Tennessee's recruiting so far. The big word today is we're going to get another big 5 star safety in Von Bell which would easily put us with a top 20 recruiting class. Pretty impressive when you consider how long Butch Jones has been there and how bad we've been the past few years.

Assuming no last-minute defections, this is going to be one of Texas A&M's best classes ever, top 10 in the nation.

And 2014 is setting up to be even better - 2013 had a lot of commits already in place when Sumlin arrived, and then it took a while for us to catch fire and for Johnny Manziel to become the legend. Still possibly our best class ever, but right now it looks like 2014 will be downright amazing, if we can maintain this momentum.

That said, our defensive line is a huge question mark for 2013. It was in 2012, as well, and our defense really outperformed our expectations. That's going to need to happen again this year if we're going to compete for the SEC West. With LSU down, Alabama coming to us, eight (!) home games, and Johnny Manziel coming off an amazing post-season performance in the Cotton Bowl, this seems like the year to strike while the iron's hot.

Gumbie wrote:

I very pleased with Tennessee's recruiting so far. The big word today is we're going to get another big 5 star safety in Von Bell which would easily put us with a top 20 recruiting class. Pretty impressive when you consider how long Butch Jones has been there and how bad we've been the past few years.

Wow, nice! With the mess at Tennessee over the last few years, Jones must have worked some real magic!

You want magic, Ole Miss has something like 5 5-stars after a 6-6 season plus a bowl win!

After multiple Cal sources said Cameron Hunt decommitted, he cryptically tweeted that we shouldn't believe everything we hear on the internet. I still think he's gone, but I guess we'll have to find out tomorrow. Good news, LB Johnny Ragin III (still the best name in football ) has recommitted to Cal.

On the topic of recruiting, I really think its a bit creepy and invasive how so many people follow and tweet @ these recruits. Cameron Hunt who's in the back half of the ESPN 150 has nearly 1400 followers and I'm sure gets plenty of kooks telling him how awesome he is, what a bum he is, and offering "enticements" real or imagined, monetary or otherwise. No idea if Nkemdiche has a twitter account but if he does in the football crazed SEC I shudder to think what sort of tweets he gets.

Nothing you can do about it other than telling kids to not use twitter, but when you're 18 and you have all these people giving you attention, hard saying no to that.

Speaking of recruiting, we haven't yet heard any of the more-than-annual recruiting violations that Lane Kiffin usually spits out by now, have we? I mean, usually he's good for a few verbal violations by this time. He must be off his game...

He's pissed off all kinds of players and coaches by pulling scholarship offers from his commits; that will do for now.

@CarlBear - Unfortunately, I'd wager that tweet means that you shouldn't believe that he decommitted over money, not that he didn't decommit.

It looks like the Dawgs will whiff on their 5 star targets, so our currently in the top 10 class will likely slip tomorrow. Still, not a bad class that has already addressed needs with 30 kids, half of whom are already enrolled.

I'm reading that THREE kids decommitted from USC today. Given that they're limited to what, 18 scholarships, that's a huge blow to an a class that's already seen some attrition.

I'm all for it, and not just because one of them is considering A&M for his signing day announcement ceremony.

One of them is a 4-star DE from Louisville who is somehow choosing Kentucky, the Kansas of the SEC. How did this guy choose that football graveyard over ascendant Louisville? I assume Louisville would have offered any 4-star at any position, right there in their city.

We had a JUCO guy choose Kentucky over us at the midterm, so it's going around.

At this point Kentucky can offer only one thing Louisville can't... playing time.