phil4bama

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I also expect Lane to tone down the dumb decisions, he won't have to just go for broke now with the talent they've acquired

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Here’s the counter argument: I think Lane will be even more reckless with his play calling and in game decisions because instead of being at Ole Miss with Pete Golding running the defense, he’s at LSU. Now he thinks he can out talent most of his opponents and if he screws up, Blake Baker’s defense is there to bail him out. He’s going to call a game like a drunken riverboat gambler until it bites him in the arse and costs him a couple of games. And Orgeron may be in his face arguing decisions with him too.

Florida will be most improved. But don’t sleep on State. If Lebby is going to survive as a head coach, he’ll have to make a big improvement this year. They will be dangerous.
Vandy comes back to Earth, Arkansas is a complete wild card and Auburn will be a disappointment for their fans expecting a quick turnaround. Sark better produce and A&M will be make a deep playoff run. Ole Miss takes a big step backwards. SECCG- Texas A&M vs Georgia.

Nah, screw it. I love the university and will have put 2 kids through law school there before I’m done at the out of state rate. And I have loved Alabama sports since I was old enough to remember. But I’m done with it now. I don’t want to be but it’s not what I fell in love with. I fell in love with Coach Bryant taking kids that weren’t 5 star athletes and getting them to play harder and meaner than the 5 star and whip his arse 8 out of 10 times. You wanna know why Coach Bryant never beat Texas or Notre Dame at Alabama? Because he was taking a knife to a gun fight, that’s why. But those stud athletes had an all day job beating Bama boys, they didn’t just roll over. Because they loved the jersey and the university it stood for and their coach.
How many can say that now? A handful maybe? The rest are paid mercenaries that don’t give a rats arse about anything related to Alabama besides the paycheck. I can’t do it. I just can’t make the transition. These kids meet every definition of pro athletes. And I don’t even mind them getting paid, but it should be a reasonable amount and should be capped at $100,000 per kid per year. That’s more than it should be but at least you aren’t making some teenage kid a millionaire for playing a football game!
And you’re kidding yourself if you think Alabama and most of the rest of the SEC can play this game for long. It’s only a matter of time before we become some mutation between a G6 school and a P4 school because we don’t have billionaire alums that want to have a dick measuring contest of who can buy the best team. It’s sad really that it has come to this.
I know I sound like sour grapes but that’s not it. I’m pissed and I’m sad that ESPN and Disney and money have ruined a great American tradition and taken away my favorite hobby. It wasn’t broke. It didn’t need fixing. Tweaked, maybe, but not this. And the Big 10 is laughing their asses off at our dumb commissioner and how they outfoxed him and neutered the mighty SEC. To each his own, I don’t fault any of you that still love it and don’t see a problem. I hope I’m wrong but my belief is we are on a countdown to irrelevance in the major sports. Roll Tide y’all. It was so much fun while it lasted.

Unless a basketball game breaks out in The Joe this weekend, I like our chances as well. But guys, cut out the drama and the cardiac kids act. Have a killer instinct and put them away!

I can’t disagree Robot Santa. But my greatest suspicion and fear is that when the electorate throws the GOP out on their collective asses, whenever that may be, the Democrats have been given the precedent to govern this way. And I will be surprised if they don’t wield it. You opened Pandora’s box, Republicans, and now the evils have escaped. And they will probably be used against you. How could you not foresee and expect it? That is exactly why you don’t do these things. Thomas Jefferson was right: a little rebellion every now and then is a good thing.

The Republicans are playing a game of semantics: racial gerrymandering is illegal. Political gerrymandering has been ruled as permissible by SCOTUS. I don’t agree with that decision, rigging voting is rigging voting no matter the reason, but it is what it is. So the GOP comes up with the idea of relabeling their gerrymandering as political and oh, by the way, it just happens to impact minority voting exclusively and is embraced by the deep South so fast it makes your head swim. How convenient.
I want my country and my state to move past their ugly history with minorities. And call it what you will, this gerrymandering is racist as hell, if not by design, by results. It is wrong and it is wrong for the Democrats to try to play tit for tat. We insist on playing these political games while our country spends itself into ruin and all we care about is labeling our brothers and sisters who hold different opinions and views as “liberals, socialists, conservatives, neo Nazis, far left extremists, far right extremists.” We are Americans who used to be able to debate politics civilly and find compromise. But now the other side is evil and out to destroy the country. Anybody that believes that on either side needs to look in the mirror and realize it is YOU who are destroying the country. And some of you need to remember your Christianity and the golden rule. And you all will downvote this post to hell because it hits too close to home. I don’t care. You need to look in the mirror and look in your heart and evaluate yourself and your intentions.

And just so you know before you go labeling me, I am an old, white Christian male who has voted Republican my entire life because I have conservative political views. But I do not agree with extreme political views of any kind and that is what I am seeing from the GOP and I cannot and will not condone or support this Republican party. MAGA and Trump are dangerous extremists that imperil our democracy and I am sad and disappointed and angry that I voted for this wannabe dictator 3 times. I will never vote for a GOP candidate again as long as the party is controlled by the extreme right. In the past, I would have been considered pretty conservative. In today’s climate, I am probably labeled something like a left-leaning centrist. Again, I don’t care. Right is right and wrong is wrong and I am objective enough to know the difference and will not support it.

Rant over, fire away.

And at 3pm, there will be free CPR classes on the ramps leading down from the upper deck.

Just curious because I don’t follow baseball close enough to know but have we EVER lost this many midweek games in a season?

Word is he is concussed. frick, frick, frick!

A big part of the problem is Greg Byrne (who I think was excellent at his job until now) is playing the game by rules that no longer exist. Jimmy Sexton probably suspects this too and is throwing his weight around to squeeze every dollar he can from people not adjusting to the paradigm shift that has occurred in college football. Name me an elite coach in the NFL. I’m not talking about someone who is slightly above most of his peers, I’m talking about someone who is head and shoulders above the rest of the league. The last one I can think of is Belichik and even his name is questionable considering what he has done post-Brady. There are no Vince Lombardi’s, Tom Landry’s, Don Shula’s or Chuck Noll’s anymore. Why? Why does the front office affect the product on the field more than the guy running the team from the sidelines? My best guess is unrestricted free agency just like we have in the new college football. NFL coaches don’t have the luxury of 4-5 years of drafting and developing players to fit their system and hone their talents. Neither does college anymore. You have to win and win now, and the only way you can do that is put the best players you can afford and assemble on the field. The caliber of your football coach is very much diminished now. Teams are winning mostly because of the talent differential, not because the coach is a better tactician or a better motivator. Cleveland is a disaster and has been for years because despite having high draft picks, their front office is a train wreck and they draft poorly.

The name of the game is to hire a competent coach who is player friendly and keep him as long as you can without overpaying for him because his kind is no longer a rare commodity. You’re better off putting most of your money into NIL and scouting and recruiting but understand you have little room for projects (ie Proctor) and high priority on players who can play for you right now.

Byrne maybe should have extended CKD, but there is no way in hell he should have agreed to that unmitigated buyout. That is the first line in the sand colleges have to draw with Jimmy Sexton: the unlimited, unmitigated buyout is dead. If your client wants to walk, then walk. We can replace him tomorrow with a cheaper if unproven coach that can do what he is tasked to do now. That is, build a competent staff that can hold their own with other coaches if given equal or near equal talent. They don’t have to be elite football minds and sometimes it doesn’t matter if they are. Lane Kiffin is the best offensive coordinator in football IMHO. His offenses are elite. But he can’t put together a defensive staff and he can’t recruit defensive talent well, especially to a place like Ole Miss. He always fell just a little short for that reason. Maybe with Blake Baker, if he stays out of his way, and gives him enough talent to work with, he can put it all together and get a natty.
I was a big proponent of hiring Cignetti. Now, I’m not so sure he can sustain what he did. He’s elite at identifying overlooked talent, diamonds in the rough. Indiana had a school record 8 players drafted recently. But the last 2 seasons he had the luxury of having the overall #1 pick under center. That’s a huge advantage and one that will be very difficult to replicate no matter how good of a talent scout he is. That guy just isn’t always available and he’s going to be very expensive if he is. It also didn’t hurt that he preached to these kids how they were unwanted, overlooked misfits and they played with a chip on their shoulder. You can only play that card so many times before it becomes stale. I don’t think Cignetti is going to crash and burn; he’s a very good coach. But it will be difficult to have all the pieces fall into place again like they did last season. He’ll be consistently among the top 4-5 schools in the B1G going forward.

All this rambling to say that the days of the 8 figure coach is going to end soon, or it should because you’re waaay overpaying for the product. Smart athletic programs are going to invest the majority of their money into scouting and recruiting, and the schools that play the “Moneyball” game are going to be extremely successful. Top shelf talent is more critical than ever, especially under center. And who in the hell ever decided that “cause” to fire a coach doesn’t include job performance? In any other job on the planet, that is reason #1 for cause to fire. Byrne bet the house on DeBoer and it may not have been necessary or prudent and may cause him to be fired, especially because of the buyout he agreed to.

And so it begins. The consequences of unfettered NIL. This is just the canary in the coal mine. It will get a lot worse for non-revenue sports, especially sports that have both a women’s and a men’s team. Cut both to remain in compliance with Title IX and save more money at the same time. I suspect swimming to be on the chopping block at a lot of schools soon. Both sexes have a team, pool maintenance is an expensive endeavor, technical swimsuits are expensive (women’s run $500-600 each) and it’s just a money hole.