Similarly, try explaining to people that the class of 2000 was not the first class of the millennium - the class of 2001 was.*****************
Hey, if you think that was a lose-lose situation, just try to convince some people of the reality that WSU did NOT go to two Rose Bowls in five years. The reality is that they went to two Rose Bowls in six years, but some folks just cannot wrap their heads around that reality.
P12 showing up in spades
- Thread starter BleedCrimsonandGray
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So that covers maybe 50 NBA draft picks per year, with international players. There are about 350 D1 basketball schools. 68 make the tournament. Those scholarships at all those schools still need to be filled.
For the top guys it’s always been showing them the money. Pro prospects, straight cash, jobs for mom and/or dad, new car, new house, all of the above, whatever.
What's sad is, periodically you see those "[insert team mascot]s in the NFL" things... invariably, WSU is mostly injured/practice squad, and nobody tearing up the league. That's a hard sell on in-home visits.
But I was at least happy for River Cracraft yesterday to get some snaps for the Niners, and Herc, when he makes some noise.
Yeah, it's rough, and goes back to the Jimmies and Joes coming in the door. The only way to overcome that is to have some aberrant breakthroughs, whether through recruiting or development, who stick and make some noise in the league, begetting a few more. Utah has been able to do it, for example.
WSU really needs the equivalent of a Klay Thompson in basketball. That's a tall order, of course, but a Coug playing at an all-star level on a winning team in the NFL would at least make it seem more plausible to football recruits that it's a place they can succeed and get drafted at ... which it is, of course. If Jared Goff went to WSU instead of Cal, there's no good reason to think he would not have had about the same career, if not better, and would not have been drafted highly based on his physical attributes.
WSU can't get the talent because of the lack of guys in the league--in addition to the dozens of other factors cutting against WSU in P5 recruiting battles--and because it doesn't get the talent, it either doesn't get guys in the league or they don't stick. Then that's used against it in recruiting.
Difficult to get out of the cycle. Meanwhile, the elite SEC teams have half their starters get drafted and an early-aughts era USC team has a backup QB who essentially never saw the field get drafted and carve out a decent career.
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Late bloomers, grade risks, JC guys. Our kinda guys, to use the former, stupid and overused recruiting slogan of the instate rival.
Whoa, Herc got some snaps? Cool.
Been waiting for a LB to play since Raonall Smith (sp)
We had big time OL NFL contributors for a stretch there, but nobody gaf about OL dudes. Big bodies don't move the needle for recruits, no matter howany go on to have successfull NFL careers.
He's played over 100 snaps in the last 15 days for the Vikes, and even had a sack @ DET. Played 78% of snaps this Sunday.
Pretty much agree. I mean, some of my UW friends unironically call their school "Running Back U" because Miles Gaskin is in the league, so who's to say we can't call ourselves "QB U" for having a Super Bowl loser like Jared Goff? Dude posted a 57.9 QBR with 50% completion, with 0 TDs and 1 INT #legend
BTW, if there was ANY doubt about UW being Running Back U... well, there should be. Sports Illustrated (2020):
So, you don't actually have to even be connected to reality, as the UW example shows...
Biggs beat me to my comment, but a few select blue bloods like Alabama and Ohio State don’t need to pay players. Football scholarships to those schools translate into NFL draft stock much like a acceptance to Harvard and Yale guarantees professional elitism.
Alabama has 25 scholarships to give and 50 of the top 5 & 4 star kids standing in line for one. They don’t need to pay anyone.
Alabama has 25 scholarships to give and 50 of the top 5 & 4 star kids standing in line for one. They don’t need to pay anyone.
People may want to read this well-known article on bag men, too. https://www.bannersociety.com/2014/4/10/20703758/bag-man-paying-college-football-players
Jim Walden told Jim Sterk that WSU needed bag men like they have in the South.
So at the start of the 2008 season, Martin Stadium ushers began handing out barf bags at the front gate.
No program employing Tosh is concerned about running a clean program. If you had heard how the bag of cash at Bob's Burger's went down you can tell this wasn't his first time.
There is way too much money in cheating. Players and families want to get paid. Coaches want to win. The NCAA doesn't want to hurt the revenue a super team can generate.
Remember Albert Means? He was the DT whose HS coach “sold” him to Alabama.
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Totally disagree. Saban is a Nazi and controls everything he can. I don't think Lupoi gets an interview at Alabama without a Downfall-type warning speech; his shadowy reputation precedes him. No way Saban is onboarding recruiters without letting them know what happens if they bring the NCAA down on the program. No way Alabama is still Alabama if Saban didn't run a tight ship (sorry, I don't buy "they make money for the NCAA" because so did Miami, USC and Ohio State).
Edit: boosters is a slightly different thing. One of my neighbors here is a former Alabama football program assistant; when I asked him about Reuben Foster & the H2, he told me you can only control so much - invariably, there are a half dozen boosters who own car dealerships... but I don't even think we have a see-no-evil Paterno situation here. By contrast, I always knew Ole Miss was dirty under Freeze; just took awhile to get out.
So, Saban and Coach K are the two shining white knights in world of corruption and greed? Or just better at not getting caught, while making the NCAA a ton of cash?
Tua's family moving to Alabama seemed, I guess not coincidental in my opinion. You already brought up Foster. That's where the plausible deniability comes in, and why the NCAA has a penalty for lack of institutional control. SMU got caught (repeatedly) because it was so brazen, and there was a paper trail.
How many successful programs haven't been dirty over the years? Even Wooden's UCLA squads had some sketchy stuff surrounding them and he was the height of integrity. If Wooden wasn't able to run a clean ship, how is someone like Saban?
What a deeply un-serious caricature you've set up, so that one's only options are "shining white knight" or "world of corruption of greed." No. Most schools exist somewhere between the absurdist polar ends you've highlighted.
But closer to the "white knight" side, Harvard and Yale and Stanford are USAF are rarely in the news for recruiting improprieties or smoking guns; presumably because their identity is not football and they have an altogether different commitment to honor (esp the academies). At the "world of corruption and greed" end, you would have Ohio State (Tressel), Miami (Da U), Auburn (esp Rodney Garner), and Ole Miss (Freeze), who have at one time or another run cultures of corruption. I am CERTAIN we agree that each team falls somewhere on that spectrum (in fact I shared a group with a WSU ST star who passed our group-points-only class with flying colors despite never showing up to our groups).
My next point is that you can have a full-blown culture of corruption (e.g., SMU, Miami) encouraged by leaders and cultivated from top to bottom, vs a culture where leaders don't encourage wrongdoing but know it's going on and tolerate it (Briles/Baylor, Paterno/PSU, maybe even Carroll/USC), vs a culture where leaders actively take precautions to prevent it and root it out (military academies). I'm CERTAIN we agree there is a spectrum of cultural attitudes around cheating too.
Finally, a coach/program cannot control everything. A booster who owns a dealership doesn't bother asking Saban's permission to loan a poor teenaged football star a $70k car; there is only so much one can control there. By contrast, we're all familiar with the U, and SMU, and @ Ole Miss, the number of suspicious recruiting flips to a bottom-feeder school followed by family members with university jobs was not only too much too soon, but it required a level of complicity on the part of the university itself. Not so for Bubba to loan Reuben an H2. Ole Miss flew too close to the sun and got busted. Everyone wants to take Bama down and nobody can. So either they're the double-secret CIA of college football, or Saban does a pretty good job running a tight ship.
The "everyone who's good is cheating" is just more PAC-12 sour grapes. It's whiny and on brand for us.
Are you Paul Finebaum's alter ego? You're explaining the plausible deniability- it's all the boosters.
Them booster ain't on board Coach Saban's tightly run ship, so Coach Saban don't know nothin bout nothin. It was just kinda weird how the family of a top QB prospect moved to Alabama from Hawaii. It was just kinda weird how another top recruit had a H2, and showed up with an Auburn tattoo.
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You realize that there is a HUUUUUGE conflict of interest between the offenders and the entity that is supposed to provide oversight.
We can go down the list of cheating, specifically the enrichment of players, and point out how the NCAA is notoriously light on punishment for this offense.
Bamas players are getting french benefits, just like everyone elses are. Just because Saban runs a tight ship doesnt make it so - it means his plausible deniability is that much more plausible.
So is your contention that, because coaches hypothetically have plausible deniability, all programs are the same and there are no cultural or operational differences? Thus, SMU = Yale? Naval Academy = Da U?
It's a laughably incomplete - not to mention manifestly false - theory.
If you want to believe that Saban and Bama are squeeky clean, you are choosing to ignore Albert Means and Reuben Foster, and willing to turn a blind eye to Tua's family moving halfway around the world. You are (perhaps unwittingly) proving the plausible deniability. If something is "hidden" from Saban's view, then it's all good.
Um, midshipman pay is like $1k/mo. I'm sure we agree this incentive is not winning recruiting battles, especially considering you're on the hook for a full military lifestyle for 4 years in college and 5 years of naval service after...
Until Nick Saban retires, they have a couple of 8-4 seasons with some retread coach, and their alumni are out with pitchforks. Then there’s no choice but to pony up!
My man - Saban didn't even start coaching Alabama until 2007. Citing Albert Means being paid in 1999 as evidence that Saban is the same as the rest is... well, I can't think of anything nice to say.
What we know is that a booster [presumably] let Reuben Foster borrow a Hummer once, perhaps more. We also know that Tua's family moved from Honolulu to Tuscaloosa, where cost of living is 24% lower and nobody has materialized to my knowledge with University of Alabama jobs. Has anyone called the FBI about this obvious case of malfeasance? When will the 30 for 30 be released?
By contrast, I gave the example of Laremy Tunsil, who flipped from a top Georgia program to bottom feeder Ole Miss, and had multiple family members materialize with university jobs in sudden weeks. And ultimately, Freeze's program got busted because there were way too many of those things going on.
Again... there are cultural and operational differences.
Umm, the obvious point was that Alabama has been caught. Sorry you missed that.
Of course no one has materialized on Tua's family. Everyone's palms are greased. Are you that naive?
This is weak*ss backtracking.
Recall etown started by saying any program employing Tosh is dirty, with me saying I disagree because Saban is a Nazi. Your inaugural post mentions Saban by name while mocking the idea that he runs a fairly clean program. Sorry, no resetting the gameboard before you lose your queen.
Also, what a pointless claim that a program has been caught. Cornell ran the table in 1923 under Gil Dobie... maybe Charles Wellington III's family was spotted relocating in Ithaca? At what point do they get off the hook?!
Laremy Tunsil's fam got uni jobs at the weak FB school their son unexpectedly flipped to, despite having no qualifications. If you have a smoking gun of that magnitude, bring it. Otherwise, you have a family saving 24% a year and being near their kid...
Speaking of backtracking I’ll copy and paste what you wrote above. You were justifying Saban hiring Tosh Lupoi because he runs such a clean program. Now you’re at “fairly clean.”
Totally disagree. Saban is a Nazi and controls everything he can. I don't think Lupoi gets an interview at Alabama without a Downfall-type warning speech; his shadowy reputation precedes him. No way Saban is onboarding recruiters without letting them know what happens if they bring the NCAA down on the program. No way Alabama is still Alabama if Saban didn't run a tight ship (sorry, I don't buy "they make money for the NCAA" because so did Miami, USC and Ohio State).
Edit: boosters is a slightly different thing. One of my neighbors here is a former Alabama football program assistant; when I asked him about Reuben Foster & the H2, he told me you can only control so much - invariably, there are a half dozen boosters who own car dealerships... but I don't even think we have a see-no-evil Paterno situation here. By contrast, I always knew Ole Miss was dirty under Freeze; just took awhile to get out.
The Tosh stuff was blatant. It was a bag of cash at the table followed by, I kid you not, "I'm going to go to the bathroom and I'm not worried about this cash being here when I get back". That's not the actions of a man who pushed the envelope and got caught. That's someone used to ignoring the rules.
Saban brought this guy in to recruit. SEC programs are notoriously dirty. Sorry. I don't think Saban is the one honest broker down south. Can I prove it beyond a reasonable doubt? No. But let's not insult our collective intelligence by saying we can infer the guy is clean because he's never been caught.
Not even remotely a good gotcha. I'm happy calling it either "clean" or "fairly clean" because evidence seems to indicate I'm right about both. You're out of options here.
I've heard your claim, and you've heard mine. So let the truth shake out.
Pre-Saban Alabama got caught. Ohio State got caught. Florida State got caught. Miami got caught. SMU got caught. Oregon got caught. Ole Miss got caught. USC got caught. Then there's drama with Baylor, Penn State, UNC, Syracuse - and on ad infinitum.
If Bama + Lupoi makes for a filthy program, let it come out. So far, after 14 Saban years in Tuscaloosa, it hasn't. Maybe the lid gets blown off someday. Until then, Saban appears to run a pretty clean program.
I'll try to improve my gotchas. You come up for air from under Saban's desk more often. Deal?
Lance Armstrong never tested positive for PED's. Neither did Barry Bonds.
Bonds failed the eye test. There was no doubt he was juicing.
The other big tell for both him and McGwire was the fact that they were hitting for power more as they got older, and they were still playing a lot of games. For most players, their power starts to drop off as they get older, and they have to learn to hit smarter. They also often get more days off. The steroids help them keep their power up, and give them the great combination of a veteran's eye and patience along with that power. Both of them were hitting harder in their mid- to late-30s, and still playing 150 games, when the mortals like Griffey were reaching the wall less often and only appearing in 130 games or less.
Sure, genetics and luck play a role in longevity too, but between their physical appearance and performance, some of the MLB standouts of the late 90s & early 2000s made it pretty obvious.
Neither have the last 10 winners of the Tour de France, and ~90% of the annual homerun champs list?
Are they all dirty too because they're successful? Not a good argument.
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