RunningJacket

You nailed it. My team passed up about 50 QB’s in the metro ATL area to buy a guy who probably never watched a game by the team he now runs. Loyalty does not and should not exist in sports. It’s all about maximizing their small window to make money. The coaches are the smart ones. Glorified PE teachers somehow outsmarted school Presidents to get paid more and often times the highest paid public employee in the state. And they can do it for decades and the taxpayers eat it up. Coaches are the smartest ones in this entire scheme.

Auburn seems to love their Natty that the paid Cam for. Same for Jameis. Same for Herschel. Same for Reggie. This is nothing new. The only difference is now all teams can buy players. I love it.

I’ve been done with it for 45 years when UGA bought Herschel which turned Dooley from a decent coach to a so called legend. But I love the sport so I still watched even though I knew it was all fake.

And then Auburn bought Cam and again no one did a thing.

This current iteration will just be more of the same with teams breaking the rules to get an on field advantage. I just ish my team would have been cheating as well instead of taking losses to merecenaries. I’m just glad a lot more fans have jumped in my boat of seeing how fake the sport has been.

You guys are funny. Nothing has really changed. Players have been paid for decades by most of the top 15 teams. Players have never been loyal they were simply forced by the rules to stay. All that has changed is that if you actually ever cared about learning player names you’ll have to learn them more often. I stopped caring about players when Inwas in class with them and they were some serious pretentious pricks. I root for the 11 uniforms of my team on the field. If one gets injured, roll his butt off the field and someone is always ready to go in.

Or they could just not take in transfers. But when Clemson did this you guys in this board mocked and made fun of them. Now you claim the portal is bad. The portal is not good nor bad. It’s just a tool now. I love the portal because it has benefitted my team and diminished many other teams.

But, sure, schools could end it tomorrow if they simply stopped taking in transfers. And the fact is that the majority of players who enter the portal do not find a new home. What you guys are really complaining about is the top 200 players. I don’t think this board really cares about a D2 soccer player who enters and then isn’t offered.

His problem is people are waking up to this “strength of schedule” garbage. It’s all based on preseason polls that are jokes. Last year my team beat a top 10 ranked team in the first game of the season. And we celebrated like we had arrived. That team ended up going 2-10.

If you were to rank the ACC teams in the preseason polls you would see our SOS shoot up as well. It’s all a manipulation. The playoffs showed the SEC is no different than the other conferences - a few top tier teams, a few bad teams, and the rest in the average middle. It took UGA, a top tier SEC team 8 overtimes to beat a mid level ACC team. Then they lost to another ACC team in the playoffs while beating Texas in the SECCG. So is Texas on the level of a GT in reality?

The point is that the only reason the SEC has a higher SOS is because their 2-1 team in mid September is still ranked while a ACC team who is 2-1 is not ranked all because of preseason bias. Soon, the preseason polls will be out and they’ll be the usual teams and no one will really know anything. Is Penn State legit finally? Are Gunner and Klubnik both “that guy”? None of us. All I know is the playoff proved on the field that the SEC was no different than the other conferences.

I have a lot of respect for Kirby. While we are on opposites of an in state rivalry, Kirby used what the NCAA turned a blind eye to and built a complete roster at UGA. He took what he learned from Saban and used it to build UGA. The portal and NIL has completely destroyed that model. 4 star bench players portaled out to get starter money elsewhere. Recruits who normally would be easy gets at UGA now being picked off a few at a time. That adds up. So even though the Bama’s and UGA’s still have highly ranked classes the rankings aren’t comparable to years past. And half the class will portal out the first time they get their feelings hurt by a coach or lack perceived playing time.

For schools in the average middle this has been a huge positive course of action that enables them to get players that would never have given them a look in the past. So I totally understand Kirby’s mindset. We’ll see how a good a coach he actually is now that he won’t have the huge talent disparity he is use to having.

Fasting is incredible. Like many of us I am not perfect and have failed at it over and over. But, the times I stuck through for 48-96 hours I slept so much better, felt so much better, ate so much better, and felt incredibly confident, Those who have’t tried it should simply go in small steps.

For me, as the great Dr. George Sheehan said, “an experiment of one”. Anything to do with health is an experiment of one. You control what and how much you put in your mouth and your physical activity. That’s it. You control it all.

We all know what is right and wrong. Dr. Berg and others in different fields simply hold up mirrors on different facets of life. There are so many benefits to fasting it’s incredible. I know because I’ve failed and succeeded and can see the drastic differences.

I developed skin rosacea pretty bad at one point in my late 40’s after having good skin genes my entire life. I went tot the dermo who diagnosed me, gave me some cream, etc. Nothing worked. Around that time is when I discovered fasting and got serious in the gym. The minute I cut out sugar/processed food and started fasting here and there it went away. And when I fail and have 5 mountain dews, cake, brownies, ice cream, etc over a month of failure it comes back and disappears again when I start over. The point is we all know we eat/drink poison every day in our American culture. All we can do is use what we already know to try and not let it kill us.

Sure, a lot of teams can make the playoffs but the recent past had SEC teams who were on a different level which is why they dominated the BCS and 4 team invitational. The SEC currently doesn’t have a team that anyone points to and says “that’s the team to beat”. Meanwhile, the team to beat is in Columbus, OH.

And it’s all due to the portal and above board payments which has leveled the talent. 3 years ago UGA beat my GT team 45-0 and it could have been 80-0. Last year we had 8 overtimes. While GT has improved some it’s clear to see that UGA’s talent has taken a severe dump as has Bama’ s and others like Tennessee and LSU. If anyone looks at it honestly you’ll all agree. Welcome to the world of inconsistency and not knowing if your good team or bad team will show up week to week. Hence two straight for the BIG who are now buying southern players like they are addicted to crack.

Yes. The BIG was also buying players. But the amounts were small compared to now and since the players are in the south when the money was close to the same the SEC would win the recruiting battle, hence the domination in recent decades. Now, that the money is unlimited other schools and conferences can target players and overcome the home town discount. My team bought our 1st ever 5 star last year. In the old system he would either be at Clemson or UGA right now. But once we targeted him (probably overpaid) we got him. My point is the SEC has generally only had to bid against themselves for the southern player. Now, the market is much bigger and legally open.

And no SEC teams are not nearly as good as in the past but that is due to the portal more than anything because your depth has vanished. And the SEC is not poor but they sure aren’t as rich as others. Yes, the SEC fan bases are more rapid, vocal, and bigger than others but that has little to do with deep money.

So, if you believe the paradigm of the last 40 years where schools in rural areas will be able to monetarily keep up in an open system of purchasing then just wait and watch. We’ll have the data in another decade or so to really be statistically relevant. But in the short term you have had 2 BIG schools win Natties rather easily and there isn’t an SEC team that stands out moving forward.