2022-23 NCAA Football Thread

[cubby]

The whole thing is just weird as hell - "hey can you pay our players for us, and get nothing in return?" It's an utterly untenable situation, like, what university isn't going to give favors to a booster who is paying hundreds of thousands to players on the team?

I agree a bit with your sentiment, although it's nice to see the people who generate all the revenue for the colleges/universities getting some of the money for themselves.

Also - where is that graphic from? How do we even know it's accurate?

[Tech614]

Also - where is that graphic from? How do we even know it's accurate?

https://www.actionnetwork.com/ncaaf/...in-the-nil-era

Agreed! Hypocrisy of universities knows no bounds though - "This is an amateur sport" while their millions of dollar per year coaches beg alums to pay players for NIL just for fun.

Signing record media deals but you have idiot ADs like Gene Smith publicly begging for people to donate NIL money. Share your own pot or cut head coach contracts in half if you need to why the hell is it alumni's job to pay the players? If there are some super rich alumni that just want to see their team win and pay players a lot more power to them but coaches or ADs basically begging for more money is so incredibly tone deaf.

[draynay]

Liberty Bowl has been pretty good, going to OT.

[Tech614]

Extended playoff can't get here soon enough so we have meaningful games being played before NYE instead of the complete sham exhibitions that bowl games have become.

[cubby]

Well since this post:

Washington State lost to Fresno
Oregon losing to NC State

So what this tells us about the strength of the PAC 12 is... nothing. Bowl games are meaningless.

But they aren't, and in fact have historically been used against the Pac-12 to "prove" they aren't as competitive as the other Power 5 conferences.

Oregon pulled out the win. Lanning gets a first-season-head-coach 10-game winning season.

The Pac-12 is 2-1 in bowl games so far.

However, I will absolutely give some ground on the idea that we aren't seeing teams at their best (even at the CFP level), with players sitting out prior to entering the draft, etc.

[cubby]

Washington beats Texas in the Alamo Bowl. Sweet victory. Gotta suck for a Texas team to lose the Alamo bowl.

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So what this tells us about the strength of the PAC 12 is... nothing. Bowl games are meaningless.

I mean, at some level, you're absolutely right - Texas lost to UW last night, but they were down their two best RB's and IIRC their starting QB.

And the deepest irony is that I want to agree with you. People use past bowl games to slam the Pac-12 as being inferior, and I really don't agree that the bowl games are the best judge of a team - outside of perhaps the CFP. It will be interesting to see how the expanded CFP affects players who might have opted out.

[Tech614]

USC only has 1 year left in the Pac 12, so they aren't important for the long term trajectory of the conference. Also have a feeling Riley is going to be a train wreck in the Big Ten unless he figures out how to get a defense and a consistent running game. He could end up being rich mans Maryland that always looks great early in the season then it all falls apart when he has to play a few Big Ten teams in late October and November in cold weather stadiums with no defense or running game.

Got to love money winning out over fit and common sense.

[cubby]

There's another factor here, which is that the 4 best teams aren't involved in the bowl games, so even if teams were trying (they aren't) it wouldn't be a good judge. Since the PAC 12 never has a CFP team, if equal to the other conferences, it should tend to dominate the bowl games because every other conference's teams get moved up a rung by CFP selections.

See, this is my problem. You lay out some huge claim stating that the bowl games don't matter, even as I point out that the Pac-12 is kicking some ass this year. And then the moment I start to agree with you, you slide right back over with "but the Pac-12 should dominate regardless".

Do you see the serious inconsistency with that argument?

Either the bowl games matter and are a good judge of inter-conference competition, and therefore the Pac-12 is looking good this year in that head-to-head competition; or they don't, and therefore never have, so the past comparisons that have the Pac-12 not looking great in the bowl games doesn't matter.

Which is it?

The major reason to slam the PAC 12 is the consistent lack of dominant teams. They produce the same number of draft picks as the other power conferences (except the SEC, which is in a league of its own) but the picks are spread out amongst a bunch of teams. The Big 10 has Ohio State and the ACC has Clemson both accounting for a disproportionate share of the talent in the conference, so those teams have been occasionally competitive with the SEC powerhouses. Instead the PAC 12 is like a rock paper scissors league every year, with a bunch of good but flawed teams who all beat up on each other. My suspicion is that this will change if USC continues to have success with Riley (if he ever figures out how defense works).

Isn't that actually a reason to prop the pac-12 up? Because they don't have one team that wins the conference ever single year? They have consistently good teams all over, and they compete well against themselves. You say they are flawed because the talent is spread across the teams, but doesn't that argument actually make the case that the Pac-12 is one of the best overall conferences?

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USC only has 1 year left in the Pac 12, so they aren't important for the long term trajectory of the conference. Also have a feeling Riley is going to be a train wreck in the Big Ten unless he figures out how to get a defense and a consistent running game. He could end up being rich mans Maryland that always looks great early in the season then it all falls apart when he has to play a few Big Ten teams in late October and November in cold weather stadiums with no defense or running game.

Got to love money winning out over fit and common sense.

I really can't wait to see how he does in the Big-10. His defense was non-existent and the running game was pretty blah.

The only good piece of the USC move is the money. The rest is almost pure stupidity.

[cubby]

The whole comment about the PAC 12 was prefaced by a “they aren’t trying anyway do it doesn’t matter” piece. You can treat the rest as a hypothetical - if they were trying, that’s how it should go.

The teams beating up on each other might make it the best conference to watch, but means it’s the worst conference for producing championship level teams. Oregon has 8 first round picks since 2010; Ohio State has 19. The overall conference might have the same number because Washington and UCLA have more than Illinios and Indiana (I assume), but that doesn’t win any titles.

And overall in all these discussions it’s SEC miles ahead of everyone else. Less distance between 2 and 5 then between 1 and 2.

Fair enough (btw, these football talks are great - enjoyable; I say that just to be clear, as written-only communication can sometimes be misinterpreted)

But the production of Championship teams is predicated on one team dominating a conference - we see that every year since the CFP was started. You really can't make it there unless you win out your conference, and the Pac-12 rarely if ever does that. So that argument would actually indicate that the Pac-12 is the best conf (outside the SEC, lols - and even then, the SEC only has a few dominant teams).

If you're looking at draft picks, take the number of draft picks per conference over the past 10 years, and divide it by the number of teams in each conference. THAT would be an interesting statistic to look at.

The SEC seems like it's miles ahead, and in some objective stats they are, but they also have teams that routinely dominate the conference, without any other team beating them out of an undefeated season? Is that the definition of a conference that is "miles ahead" of everyone else?

[Tech614]

The SEC seems like it's miles ahead, and in some objective stats they are, but they also have teams that routinely dominate the conference, without any other team beating them out of an undefeated season? Is that the definition of a conference that is "miles ahead" of everyone else?

The SEC isn't miles ahead because of being the SEC or their particular schools but how football is treated in the south. Your kid starts playing serious football from middle school, and they play fall and spring football and they are in legit S&C programs from that point on.

Alabama has 1.5% of the US population but they have 12 players ranked in the top 100: https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Fo...hool/&State=AL

So with 1.5% of the US population they have 12% of the top 100 recruits. Football is life, religion and culture in the south and it's hard for non southern teams to pull recruits from the south. So if it's not Alabama, it will be a UGA and if it's not UGA some other SEC power will rise and land these recruits. The middle and bottom of the conference is usually meh because the top teams are taking all these high end recruits and there is an absurd amount of them.

Alabama has 7 5* commits and 20 4* commits and they only had to leave the SEC footprint to recruit 5 of them. It's like playing the old NCAA Football video games for them.

[draynay]

Happy with how orange the orange bowl is this year, cheez-it bowl must be jealous.

[cubby]

The SEC isn't miles ahead because of being the SEC or their particular schools but how football is treated in the south. Your kid starts playing serious football from middle school, and they play fall and spring football and they are in legit S&C programs from that point on.

Alabama has 1.5% of the US population but they have 12 players ranked in the top 100: https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Fo...hool/&State=AL

So with 1.5% of the US population they have 12% of the top 100 recruits. Football is life, religion and culture in the south and it's hard for non southern teams to pull recruits from the south. So if it's not Alabama, it will be a UGA and if it's not UGA some other SEC power will rise and land these recruits. The middle and bottom of the conference is usually meh because the top teams are taking all these high end recruits and there is an absurd amount of them.

Alabama has 7 5* commits and 20 4* commits and they only had to leave the SEC footprint to recruit 5 of them. It's like playing the old NCAA Football video games for them.

I continually forget that about the SEC and how football is done down there.

[plz delete account]

I continually forget that about the SEC and how football is done down there.

They tried to tamper with Dalton Kincaid this spring. It was amusing to watch.

[Tech614]

I feel like every noteworthy program is tampering at this point. If not from the coaches directly then from the boosters. It's the complete wild west out there and the NCAA has lost all control. So many kids announcing transfer portal, only visit 1 school and then immediately commit, yes sure totally no tampering going on here /s.

[cubby]

Fucking UCLA losing to Pitt...what the actual fuck.

[plz delete account]

I feel like every noteworthy program is tampering at this point. If not from the coaches directly then from the boosters. It's the complete wild west out there and the NCAA has lost all control. So many kids announcing transfer portal, only visit 1 school and then immediately commit, yes sure totally no tampering going on here /s.

Like, Alabama was using its sports media to tell Kincaid that "Hey if you enter the portal and transfer to Bama you'll get a million dollars in NIL money"

After the transfer deadline ended, Rising posted a video of Kincaid shrugging

[Tech614]

Like, Alabama was using its sports media to tell Kincaid that "Hey if you enter the portal and transfer to Bama you'll get a million dollars in NIL money"

After the transfer deadline ended, Rising posted a video of Kincaid shrugging

Yea I don't doubt it at all. There is so much bullshit tampering being attempted and the NCAA is doing nothing about it. A player being contacted to transfer before being in the portal should be an NCAA violation if it's anyone with a rooting interest for the program at all, not just a coach.

[Logwyn]

The SEC isn't miles ahead because of being the SEC or their particular schools but how football is treated in the south. Your kid starts playing serious football from middle school, and they play fall and spring football and they are in legit S&C programs from that point on.

You are wrong in one regard here. Serious football does not start in middle school in SEC country. We start at that in elementary school if not in the cradle in some sectors!!!!!

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I feel like every noteworthy program is tampering at this point. If not from the coaches directly then from the boosters. It's the complete wild west out there and the NCAA has lost all control. So many kids announcing transfer portal, only visit 1 school and then immediately commit, yes sure totally no tampering going on here /s.

You know it was going to happen until the NCAA pulls in the reins.

[cubby]

Yea I don't doubt it at all. There is so much bullshit tampering being attempted and the NCAA is doing nothing about it. A player being contacted to transfer before being in the portal should be an NCAA violation if it's anyone with a rooting interest for the program at all, not just a coach.

They won't institute any rules about it because they would be almost impossible to enforce, and to put it mildly, the ship has sailed on NIL money coming for transfers. Whether it's good/bad is a mixed bag, but overall, it means the talent that is bringing in millions of dollars to universities is getting paid - which isn't a bad thing.

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Wow - Kansas St getting their asses kicked.

[Tech614]

You are wrong in one regard here. Serious football does not start in middle school in SEC country. We start at that in elementary school if not in the cradle in some sectors!!!!!

tbh it probably starts in the dad's ball sack. The swimmers already doing oklahoma drills to practice getting to the egg.