Metaloctopus

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A lot of jealousy going on in this world. Not a good look

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Is that what you'd tell a judge after you've been accused of a crime?

"It's not that what I did was illegal, your honor; it's just that people are jealous of me".

No. No one is jealous. We're angry that he's cheated the game. Your roster wasn't paid for by honest means. You had to cheat. What is there to be jealous about?

His defense will only stop mobile QB's if his players can diagnose plays and make tackles. Few defenses have the personnel to pull that off. We just need for Blake to have a plan to at least contain them, instead of it looking like they've never faced a mobile QB. They shut down Pavia two years ago, but then got run over last year against him.

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What gave it away?

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Why the snark? I said that to say that even though I know you're being sarcastic, I think it's a real discussion.

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Nowhere near the same situation considering Ronald's contract is incredibly team friendly. Having Ronald on the roster isn't precluding the Braves from doing anything else in terms of roster construction.

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Did you read to the end of what I said, or did you stop at "Mike Trout situation"? I said "If the Braves pay up and keep him" immediately after that. At no point did I say that Ronald is currently hampering roster construction. My entire post was about whether or not to re-sign him (if they can even afford whatever he asks for), exercise his two remaining club options and then let him walk if the price doesn't make sense for them, or trade him.

If they give him a big fat deal, that is when I would be concerned about a Mike Trout situation. It's not the money, it's the money for a guy who might be unavailable for a large portion of his contract. Hopefully it doesn't play out that way for Ronald, but it's hard to continue to view his injuries as unfortunate happenstance.

You keep repeating that it "doesn't matter" what I think. Why do you feel it is necessary to tell me that my opinion doesn't matter? Your opinion about what our teams do doesn't matter, either, so why bother saying anything?

I am well aware that my opinion won't change anything. SCOTUS made their rulings, I am aware. It should be apparent that I disagree with their whole premise, or at least most of it. College sports have operated the same way for 150 years, until now, because it couldn't exist as a pseudo professional enterprise. You get an athletic scholarship as compensation, and if you do well, you can go pro and make lots of money. That was always understood and accepted, and the supreme court never blinked.

Now, suddenly, these players are owed something for playing a game, and a free ride through college isn't enough. I'll grant you that the ACTUAL meaning of name, image and likeness, where players make profits off merchandise that involves those things, should be allowed. But it was obvious how that would be twisted into something else entirely, where we have players and their agents forcing pay for play, and pretending it isn't that. And where is SCOTUS now? Not a peep.

This needed to be rolled out with significant checks and balances, but there were none, and now it's nearly impossible to turn back.

By the way, your little jab about my old band days didn't go unnoticed. Whether anyone wanted to see us play wasn't the issue. When you are a local band, it is nearly impossible to get the opportunity to play somewhere in which a significant amount of people will be. But that wasn't the point. The point was that if you aren't driving revenue, you shouldn't get revenue. I clearly stated that some college sports drive enough revenue for that to be shared with them, but not all. Schools shouldn't have to fork over money to programs that lose money.

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You can argue all day about whether pay for play is a good idea or not. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you think about fairness or fixes or the fairness of fixes.

The SCOTUS seems to think that you can't artificially decrease labor costs by using the term "amateur sports."

Not paying players is no longer a choice for the NCAA or its members.

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What does any of this have to to with NIL? There is a way to pay players without NIL. Name, image and likeness covers such a broad scope of things, that there was no way to control how players and their agents would take advantage of it.

And SCOTUS has no standing to to say what players are owed, because if we're treating it like a business, then the business owners decide what somebody is worth, and if players don't like it, they can go somewhere else. That's the way the real world works. They could have done the revenue share, and left it at that. SCOTUS argued about why you can't decrease "labor' costs, not about how much you should increase it. But there's another problem: Who decided that sports were considered "labor"? It's not a service, it's entertainment. Entertainment is given value by consumer interest, not by any real world need that must be met.

I used to be in a band. That means we were entertainers. We almost never got paid, because the small venues didn't bring enough people for us to get paid. We could complain if we wanted, or we could just be happy that we got to play music in front of people and get some exposure. College sports brings in enough revenue in some sports to be able to share that revenue with their players. But not all sports. And NIL is a completely different animal, as I explained before.

I think it's pretty easy to say he neglected it this year, but it started in the offseason. I don't think it's really been our problem in the past. Two years ago, we had Fried, Sale and Schwellenbach (who was on a dominant run), but Sale got hurt right before the playoffs, and Schwellenbach had to pitch that Monday game, so he wasn't available. Then, in the wild card series, Fried laid an egg, but it didn't matter because the offense didn't show up in either game. And a similar problem happened in previous years with late injuries, Fried laying an egg, and the offense not showing up. We had the good Strider along with Fried, and still couldn't get it done in '23, and the year before that, Strider was hurt and Fried also laid an egg, AND the offense was terrible.

This year is different because we already knew we had a ton of guys either injured, or returning from injury, and so it was paramount to be proactive before the season to address that, but AA didn't. And now he didn't, again.

Now we have to hope that Schwellenbach stays on track to return in September and can get up to playoff caliber form within about three weeks after that. A lot to ask or expect, but that seems to be the Braves' plan.

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For the life of me, I don’t understand how someone could think a salary cap doesn’t make sense for the league. 70% of the league already essentially operates with a cap with the tax threshold. The few teams that don’t are typically in huge markets. The dodgers having bottomless pockets isn’t the only advantage they have, they are also able to get guys to sign deferred deals to save them money to continue to add to their super team.

Baseball has always been pretty good with parity compared to most other sports, but the dodgers have figured out the way to break that up. The problem is only 1-2 other teams in the league could possibly follow their model.

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And for the life of me, I don't know how any person alive can not see how bad salary caps are for sports. It's not "parity" that it creates, it's mediocrity. Teams face so much turnover from year to year, that fans have no one to relate to. It dumbs everything down.

You are arguing from the standpoint that that Dodgers have necessitated this. Do you not see that this was exactly why I responded to the person who was blaming the Dodgers for the looming lockout by saying that I'm going to be mad if we end up with a salary cap? My exact point was that the Dodgers actions are going to push this sport into a cap which will turn it into garbage.

And your comment about the tax threshold holds no water. It's not a spending cap, it's just a deterrent. One that has no affect on teams with bottomless pits of money. I'm talking about a hard cap that is likely coming. And sports with a hard cap are the sports version of socialism. I'd rather things continue as they are, than to see the sport completely neutered.

But here's the thing. If MLB had any common sense, which they don't, they'd force the Dodgers to play by the same rules as everyone else with their TV deal, and also stop allowing teams to defer money to the end of time like the Dodgers do. Instead, we're going to barrel straight toward the worst outcome for baseball.


Edit- The people on this board not understanding what salary caps do and pining for it's arrival is astounding. Have people learned nothing?

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Braves win Orioles win lead is now 8 games.

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The phree phallin' Phils.

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Dude, our fanbase was absolutely constantly melting about Saban until the day he retired.

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I've lived among this fanbase my entire life, and not once do I recall just being somewhere in the middle of nothing, and having people talking crap about Saban. Saban came up in conversation when he was on TV. We didn't forget, but we didn't lose our minds. And I don't need to be reminded that there are always some who will act crazy. I'm talking about our fans, in general.

Please try to understand the difference between "melting" and just not liking a guy. People throw that word around way too much.

I see a lot of people comparing their reaction to ours when Saban left. I think people are missing the point. We'll never forget when Saban left, and I wouldn't expect that Ole Miss fans will forget this. But there's a major difference between being upset and months/years later still occasionally talking about it (like we do with Saban), and melting down months later and making it the dominant topic everywhere you go.

For years, if we saw Saban, we had something to say. But Ole Miss fans have something to say when there is no reason to bring it up. That's a level of obsession that I can't relate to.