Recent Comments
Man, ND has treated the ACC like a necessary evil since they "joined". It's undoubtedly better for the ACC for them to stay (even in the current arrangement) than leave for another conference. However, I'd respect this conference a lot more if they just told them to join as a full member or go pound sand/hook up with the Big Ten.
You're not an ACC member in football. You don't share any of that NBC money with us, why should we act like you're a conference member only when it benefits you? If you were a full member, you likely would've had your chance to cement your spot in the CFP this weekend. Instead, you sat at home and got pushed out by a team that beat you head-to-head. The system dealt you a bad hand once in all these years. ND has gotten preferential treatment from the BCS/CFP for years and has nothing to show for it. It's time to stop giving them benefits that no other program in FBS receives.
Agree that the lower tier bowls are superfluous at this point. And I've said for years that having 33 bowls or whatever was way too many. There was the argument about extra practice blah blah blah...but like 9 teams just showed us this year, that doesn't mean much now. Maybe have some games for the G5 as a reward. But 8 bowls for the first round, 4 for the second round, and like 5 others for G5 would suit nicely. And the ND's and the opt-outs can sit at home and figure out how to win more then next year to get into the playoff.
And going to Boise in December is NOT a reward for a good season.
US will still travel thousands of miles while teams like France travel 334 miles in group play.
If I was the Dictator of College Football, I would get rid of all the non-CFP bowls. If we are going to have a playoff, the bowls are redundant and not really needed. I love that the first round is played on campus. You could even talk me into having all the games up to the national championship on campus.
I realize this will not happen. But with more and more players opting out, transfer portal, and now teams just flat out declining to participate, I think it's time to start the conversation.
upward trajectory of ass-itude
great name for band
The problem is that NIL is not actually using your Name, Image, and Likeness, to generate endorsements, etc. It's Pay to Play.
That said, I still think most people can live with that (before you left Mcdonalds bags of cash for players and now we invent "collectives" to launder the money). It's that combined with unrestricted movement creating an annual free agency frenzy with no rules and guardrails
He is a proven defensive coach.
Is he, though? There is a strong argument that when you have a lot of good personnel at your disposal, it is hard to be a bad manager. But when you are a bad manager with poor or middling personnel, it becomes apparent very quickly. We saw that with Pry as the head whistle, who ultimately takes accountability for those he manages. As others have already stated, there is too much stench of trying to save a buck and keep your buddy around. To me, it is a big gamble at a time when VT has very few chips to push on to the table.
The reason I heard was to minimize travel between games...you know, lip service.
This has got to damage the entire bowl structure. And lends itself to having the middle tier bowls host the first rounds, especially when they expand the number of teams. I get that it hurts the home teams that are supposed to host, but that also has to be some sort of logistics nightmare setting up for an unplanned game in 2 weeks time...the food, drink, staff, hotels, etc. Imagine there are a few that might be pushed up against a graduation or shortly thereafter. The bowls, while removing the home field, at least know they will be hosting and should have things down. I mean the basketball tournament is practically 100% on the road.
I'm not really sure there is that much more parity. If anything, I think there's less.
Your Indianas and Vandys and Texas Techs aside, the rich are just getting richer and richer. It's been nearly 30 years since we had a first-time national champ. There's a couple of chances for that to change, but look at how long Oregon's been trying to do it. The odds are against them.
The prospect of VT being relevant again is far and away the most exciting thing to me about today's college football world. I still think the arms race is a runaway train destined to go flying off the rails sooner or later.
Hopefully he takes a reduced salary and Franklin is able to make a big-time OC hire.
Overall, the move is a gamble that probably works out OK. It will be interesting to see how he wants to scheme his defense in 2026, if he tries more of the 3-high safety look or goes in another direction.
This is also interesting from a defensive position coach hiring perspective as it makes it more likely that Price or Cheetah is retained assuming Pry can choose some of his defensive staff. Personally, I like the idea of keeping Price and JGW/Adibi/Prioleau in support roles, but not anyone else.
I don't love it but reading posts here today I'm surprisingly on the more tepid side of not really caring for it. I'm willing to give him a chance there. My skepticism of his actual DC credentials is well known. But James Franklin seems to know what he's doing. He turned our 124th ranked class into a top 25 class inside of two weeks. He's had relatively good defenses with Pry as the DC before. I guess he's expecting to reproduce those, on some level. Maybe he feels that Pry's HC experience will make him a more valuable asset as a DC? I could probably get behind arguments there. I think if Pry gets the talent that JMFF can bring in his defenses will be fine. I'm more interested in who the offensive and special teams hires will be.
Franklin is going to need to prove it pretty quickly. I think he knows that and I think he'll be able to. His immediate impact on recruiting bodes well for his ability to put together a solid roster using the portal. I think he can assemble the type of talent that can win 10 games in one offseason. It might take a season or two for them to gel and actually win 10+ but I think he can get the talent here essentially over night. We'll see.
I'm luke warm on the Pry to DC move. I'm giving JMFF the same sort of benefit of doubt that I gave Pry with the Bowen hire. The difference is that JMFF has done it before.
Supposedly this move will cost ESPN upwards of $30 million. I can't find where I read that earlier, so that number might be off. And maybe that was the number for all the opt outs... In any event, maybe this is how we all get back at ESECPN. Screw them and their conflict of interest with both the SEC and the CFB Playoff.
Pry clearly loves him some James Franklin and VT.
And Franklin clearly loves him some Brent Pry. Otherwise this whole thread would never exist.
I want to believe that Franklin 100% believes that this is the best move for VT's defensive future. But we were absolute ass on defense under his tenure, and it wasn't even an upward trajectory of ass-itude. Top on the fact that VT has a pretty bad history of coordinator hires leaves me extremely skeptical. Both Franklin & Pry better be ready to be roasted if this turns out poorly. I think it will be an absolute death knell for Pry's career if this fails in < 3 years.
RAIL EXPERT
|
7 months 5 days
# | Dellenger: Notre Dame to receive playoff autobid for top 12 finish The ACC is no doubt a shitshow but the Notre Dame AD is being a little bitch saying the relationship between the ACC and ND is permanently damaged for the other sports because of the ACC pushing for Miami to get in.
This is kinda crazy but my dad died a week ago tomorrow. I wrote the obit and eulogized him at the funeral. I wrote the obit about a week before he passed, after the second stroke it was just a matter of time. It took me like a half hour and it was relatively easy.
The eulogy was a lot tougher. I would open my laptop and just stare at the blank Word doc and close it without writing a word. I finally did it the morning of the funeral and my heart just opened up and spilled all over those pages. I was worried I was going to say too much, as in the subject matter, not the length of the speech, but people loved it. I was taken aback by how many people came up to me afterwards to tell me how it touched them. I was happy I did a good job for my dad.
God bless everyone who's felt the pain of losing their loved ones.
UVA spent part of the 1990 season ranked #1.
The 1998 and 2003 editions of the Hoos were also particularly strong and probably better teams top to bottom than this year's Lucky Horseshoes.
But is it their best year since Al Groh was coach? Absolutely. And they still found a way to completely embarrass themselves.
yeah, it's why it will never happen. The things that make sense generally don't make sense to those wielding the power. ESECPN would NEVER sign up for something that was fair to all the leagues. If it's not beneficial to the SEC it's a non-starter. Problem is, anything that benefits the SEC is unfair for everyone else. But that's not ESECPN's problem. That's the problem of the peons who don't fucking matter.
I hate ESECPN because they don't even try to pretend being fair anymore. It's all about them and it's selfish and greedy AF and it makes me sick.
Yep. The age of business decisions
lol, based solely on this meme, the ND AD would actually have a point. The ACC is often (if not always) wrong.
But also, he's out of touch AF too. I guess both could be true.
Yes, but then the SEC (the rest of them too I'm sure) dream of making up half of the playoff and bringing home all of the money could never be realized.
Bar I agree very much. It's good for the sport for different teams being able to rise up. No problem with paying the players that generate the revenue and when I was in college I was allowed to transfer as much as I wanted to so I have no issues with unrestricted transfers in theory. Where it's been screwed up is the chaos of the timing of the windows along with the rest of the calendar. Bring back the regional rivalries, break away and form the super league, and let's get em on the field!
Here's the thing. If the CFP had come right out and mandated that in order to make the playoff you have to win your conference championship game that would have forced the conferences to figure out a structure that allowed for their best team to win the league and advance to the playoff. That would likely have stopped conference realignment in its tracks. There'd be no incentive for conferences to grow larger. Texas and OU would still be part of the BigXII. The PAC12 wouldn't have collapsed. ACC wouldn't have added SMU, Cal, or Stanford. Divisions would still exist. Scheduling would make sense where each conference ensures that their best teams are in the conference championship game. If you want to make the argument that conference realignment has been the biggest culprit of "ruining" the sport I think you could have easily avoided the conference realignment to begin with by making a 4 team playoff that took only conference champions. Then force the committee to decide which 4 champions they select and seed them appropriately. We would have avoided a whole hell of a lot of problems that way.
All this talk of the playoff today has me thinking that college football has a big problem to solve with the G5 schools. Lots of folks upset that two G5s are in and both are likely to lose by a considerable margin. All while the likes of ND, Texas, BYU, and Vandy are on the outside looking in. I agree with the sentiment, but if we are going to exclude them from the chance of qualifying, then we need to create an environment where they can still compete for something bigger than a conference title.
Why not bifurcate Division I into three separate units: P4, G5, and FCS? All have a playoff and all crown a national champion. To your point, this could give some of the lesser bowls more prestige by being G5 playoff sites (though I still think those games should be on campus).
I agree that JMU and Tulane are not in the conversation as one of the 12 best teams. You might as well rule out the entire G5 before the season starts if that's the guiding qualification though.