re: Taylor Hamm & Billy Liucci make SWEET LOVE in 2019 + Football Recruiting Thread

seems true

apparently it has to do with recurring behavioral issues. whatever that entails

Hamm aired all the dirty laundry on his facebook site today:

quote:

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Taylor Hamm
Admin · 3 hrs
Please Read:

I want to address the rumors circulating around myself and Ryan Brauninger over at TexAgs.

It’s a bit of a layered issue so stick with me as I provide a very detailed and accurate account.

I have to give some background on a few things first before I get to Thursday night but before I do I want to make it very clear that this was not a post I wanted to make. I’ve had a great working relationship with TexAgs for months and I keep in frequent contact with Liucci and Hop.

Unfortunately, I have to provide some facts that shouldn’t have to be made public but an attack on my character has been made and details floating out there are flat-out inaccurate.

Let me start with explaining my relationship with Brauninger. Like most employees at TexAgs, I feel like he’s had a negative opinion of me from the moment he got in the industry.

We’re both very competitive and passionate guys, so I understand the natural rivalry since we are competing for information. There’s also an added grudge that he had towards me that I didn’t learn about until it came to light last Thursday that I’ll get into here shortly.

I’m very selective about who I trust in this industry because over my ten years of doing this I’ve been burned a lot, so I keep my circle small. Not to digress into TexAgs’ past with me but it’s worth noting once again that this is a site that had to fire an employee for fabricating quotes from a story I did (Jacob Kristen made up quotes from my story on Wole Betiku), had another employee start the Steven Parker myth (Brice Jones), and have allowed a lot of nasty and personal things said about me on their website over the years. I don’t want to lose track of my purpose here but there’s so much more I’ll eventually go into detail about one day.

I just wanted to set the tone about how Brauninger has never tried to form a relationship with me like he has with other analysts because of the reasons above.

This summer at the Aggies’ summer camp, I was standing outside the indoor facility with Brian Perroni, who I’m still very close with to this day, when Brauninger walks up. He begins to make small talk with Perroni and I wanted to use that opportunity to extend a handshake and give a peace offering.

Perroni can account for what happened next. Brauninger looked at my hand and told me, “I’m not shaking your fricking hand.”

I let it go and didn’t think about it again. I did call Hop and Liucci to let them know that I tried to be the bigger man but that I got a disgusting response from Ryan. They said they were going to talk to him but apparently it didn’t work.

Fast-forward to week one of TXHSB, when I went to Atascocita vs Katy Taylor. Brauninger was out there as well.

After the game, I interviewed Kenyon Green. I was using my phone to interview so my back was turned to what happened next.

During my interview, Brauninger is behind me flexing and grabbing his TexAgs shirt and flashing it to Kenyon, essentially trying to distract him. Kenyon did a good job of holding it together for me and finished the questions but it was extremely unprofessional. I didn’t say anything to him and let it go.

That gets us to Thursday night when I go to see Demond Demas and Javonne Shepherd.

I’m running a few minutes late to the game and I walk in the gates and Branuniger is talking to Mike Craven from the AAS. He’s staring me down as I walk up to the field so I asked him what his problem was and that’s when he began to get in my face and lay into me about what he’d been holding in for a long time.

Brauninger graduated from McNeese St. and went to grad school at A&M. While at McNeese, he played baseball with Matt Fontenot, who was brought on by Sumlin to be his director of operations a few years ago.

Getting back to Thursday, Brauninger got visibly upset about an open records request that I did over a year ago and let me hear it. Open records requests are not uncommon, reporters do them all the time, and my intention for doing this one had absolutely nothing to do with Fontenot or Brauninger. Fontenot was on the list of people I had on there because I was canvassing the entire athletic department.

Apparently, Fontenot had to hand over some sensitive information about his personal life and he told Brauninger. These two are very close. In fact, Brauninger is the Godparent to Matt’s kids.

Brauninger laid into me about how Matt didn’t get the same job under Jimbo Fisher and somehow was trying to correlate that my open records request was the reason he didn’t get the same job under a new regime.

Back to the game, the Athletic Director saw Brauninger and I on the sideline and asked us to take it outside. We walked out into the parking lot and that’s when cooler heads prevailed.

We got in our vehicles and went around the corner and talked it out like adults. We got everything off our chests and then went back and apologized to the athletic director. He accepted our apology and said we’re welcome back any time but tonight we’re sitting this one out.

I told Brauninger that we needed to go find a spot and sit down and talk more so we found a local place and had a great talk.

We literally left hugging. As far as I'm concerned, Brauninger and I are good.

Brauninger was very concerned that he was going to go back to College Station without an interview with Demond Demas. At the time, I was still the only site to have quotes because of my relationship with Rischad Whitfield.

I called Rischad Whitfield, who was at the game, and had him make sure Demas called Brauninger that night. He ended up going back to the high school to get the audio interview instead. I even gave Ryan Demas’ number to lock in. I wanted to do the right thing after our talk.

This ended up being a great thing that needed to happen. Obviously not on the sidelines, and I really couldn’t get out of the way of his approach, but I could have walked away right when it happened. That was a mistake.

Brauninger called Liucci to tell him what happened and that’s where things went sideways with TO98. Liucci then called Rush to alert him instead of calling me.

Rush reached out to Craven, who is also friends with Brauninger, to corroborate the story. Perroni was there but was on the opposite side of the field. Those were their witnesses.

Essentially, the guys I work with took the story third-hand from my competitors, and I never got a chance to defend myself. Nor did they believe me when I tried. They did ask me not to say anything to Brauninger about the Kenyon Green incident, but this was not able to be avoided and I was perfectly capable of smoothing things out with Ryan like an adult which I did.

I don’t understand why and probably never will get the full story. Over the past few weeks, Rush has been in frequent contact with Liucci and the CEO of FanReact went to College Station before our launch at TO98 to mend their relationship but didn’t include me. In my opinion, that would have been a great opportunity to sit down with everyone at TexAgs and mend relationships with everyone in their office, especially Ryan.

There’s more to this story. FanReact CEO Buckner actually approached TexAgs a while back about white-labeling their product and getting into other college markets. Per Buckner, TexAgs stole their idea and that’s how F5 Productions started that David Sandhop now manages. That’s just one side of the story but that’s all I can offer up.

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yeesh

Response from his old boss:

All I can say is this is very unprofessional. I don't know who's to blame, don't know who's at fault and really don't care. All I know is that this is not a good look for the school the athletic department and the people it lets in.

^ Way too aggressive in getting his "scoop" interviews. I've watched Hamm at more than a few sideline interviews where kids were trying to get away from him.


Malik Hornsby has not given a verbal to A&M yet. Not sure what the issue is. Let's just that info comes from a more direct source than those paywall folks.

I had been led to believe TO 98 was Jay's site. After looking at it, appears to belong to Rush. And it's got the smell of TexAgs about it.

They’re all pathetic. That’s why they cover the recruitment of 18-year-olds. I don’t know many of them that can maintain real jobs.

So he basically blamed everyone else.

Looch called his boss.

Ryan was an enraged lunatic.

Rush and his group didn't give him a chance.

Hamm was always the bigger person.

Lee went after him. Jacob went after him. Whoever else.

Poor Hamm.