rcade

True, but the entire North Dakota population is 783,000, which is smaller than Fort Worth. Put a strong football team in Denton and we'll have advantages from being in DFW that are better than being the top school in a small state.

We will always have to worry about TV viewership. TV dollars are the big divider between the haves and the have-nots.

I'm having trouble with the premise that Miami can't compete financially for players. They assembled one of the most expensive rosters in the FBS in football, estimated at around $15 million. Big-money boosters are trying to bring back The U's glory days with their checkbooks. If this coach couldn't hack the NIL era it isn't because Miami lacks NIL donors.

Whether we recruit them out of high school or get them in the portal, the risk of a QB leaving after a strong season in Denton is the same. At some point if our transferred-out quarterbacks keep being roster depth riding the bench, maybe a 3,000-yard passer under Eric Morris will be more reluctant to leave.

I don't care about blame. There's enough to go around. I'm fine with college football players being paid and them getting more transfer opportunities, but the way both of those things are currently implemented has been a Hindenburg-level disaster for college football. Uncontrolled and unaccountable money from boosters and a transfer portal during the season are terrible ideas.

I thought a 12-team playoff would mean less arguments about teams that didn't get in deserving a spot, but I underestimated the ability of Alabama to suck enough to not earn a place in the CFP. The SEC and Big Ten get way too much presumption every year of being good. It starts with the first preseason poll, when nobody has done anything on the field.

You think our new hires should coach the defense in the bowl game?

SMU played like their paychecks bounced. Good times.

Starting in 2025, the Ivy League will participate in the FCS playoffs and the winner of the conference will get an automatic bid. Football was the only sport where the Ivy League did not compete for a national championship. The idea to join the FCS playoffs originated with a proposal from the league's student-athlete advisory committee. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/43040720/sources-ivy-league-participate-fcs-football-playoffs

You can't call it Pay for Play when they don't have to play to get paid. NIL is an endorsement deal, like Walt Garrison making bank in those old Skoal tobacco ads. Except most of the time they don't even bother to make athletes do an ad. They just say "here's a big check for just being yourself."

It will be headline news when we learn a player was only allowed to transfer once.

SMU was the first school to announce a pay-the-whole-roster deal. It let the world know that the Piggybank Express was open for business again and it fostered team cohesion. Those benefits seem worth paying even the bottom of the roster like an assistant manager at Subway. I am surprised SMU had any fat cats left who cared about football success. The 1980s was a long time ago. But I guess what the Hard Line used to call the "cocaine and boob job crowd" in Dallas wants a winner.

If a quarterback we recruit from high school puts up Chandler 1 or Chandler 2 numbers at UNT, he's also going to be one-and-done.

I don't know how you could possibly believe that the G5 is better able to compete with the P5 overall when unlimited and unregulated money is flowing into college football. Our all-conference team each year is a shopping list for bigger schools. https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/college-transfers-power-five-conferences-aee82375

Does anyone know if this new money is no-strings-attached just like NIL?

I'd choose Oklahoma State too. Mike Gundy is the kind of coach who will help you bury the body.

Florida State coach Mike Norvell has restructured his contract and given $4.5 million back to the school for a new fund that shares revenue with athletes: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/43003950/florida-state-mike-norvell-restructures-deal-gives-45m-new-initiative He makes $9.9 million next year so this is like taking a one-time 45 percent pay cut. He has a deal all the way to 2031 that's in serious peril if this year's catastrophic collapse becomes a trend.

My justification for not donating to an NIL collective is that the wild west NIL era is harming college football and making the gap between the G5 and the P4/3/2 wider, so why would I fund that?

I'd rather have a transfer portal window after the spring semester than one before the bowls. Force players who want to transfer to do it in the summer. The players who stayed get the benefit of spring practice and longer offseason time with their teammates.

Losing a bowl game team because of transfers is another sign of disaster in the FBS. Bowl games are starting to feel like the first game of next season, not the last game of this one. Florida State hasn't been the same since 24 players opted out of the Orange Bowl and the left-behinds got beat 66-3.

A player who enters the portal certain they are going to leave will opt out of bowl games. But some of them may enter the portal wanting to see the offers they get before they decide to transfer. Last year only 45% of players who entered the portal went to a new school. If the transfer portal could move after bowl games (unlikely for academic reasons), there might be a lot more players participating in bowls.

I don't think they're completely gone. We'll still get some football and basketball stars who love the place enough to commit to it for multiple seasons. They'll just be exceedingly rare and as fans we need to appreciate them. When Chandler Rogers and the other four-school portal chasers look back on their college careers in the future, will the diehard fans at their schools look back on them? Part of the appeal of playing is the money, no doubt, but another part is the glory of the game. If Rogers had stayed he could've left UNT as the fifth- or fourth-place QB in total passing yards in only two seasons.

Yes he did. We also approached Jimbo Fisher and interviewed Jay Norvell and Tyrone Nix. Harbaugh also was interviewed by Tulane and Stanford. Does anyone know if we chose Dodge over Harbaugh or if it didn't reach that stage (such as if Harbaugh wanted more money or was just doing the interview to sweeten the offer somewhere else)?

I don't know about that idea. It is the norm in college football for players to announce they are hitting the portal after the season but before the bowls. Twenty four FSU players left before the Orange Bowl last year and it wasn't because they were transferring to Georgia.

To have any optimism requires a 12-pack empty guy.