Every Big 12 coach voting for a 24-team playoff and now the whole league signing up for some College Sports Commission thing. Yormark is out here turning us into the participation trophy conference. Back in the 1998 Sun Bowl we earned that trip by winning games on the field, not by getting an invite because we finished 7-5. Now every coach is happy to let everybody in so nobody has to feel left out. The old Big 12 would have laughed at this nonsense. We used to fight for every single snap and now we are fighting for a revenue share agreement. Pat Sullivan is rolling over in his grave watching what we have become.
My uncle's 1998 Camry smelled like boiled peanuts and hope every home game. We pulled into the North Campus lot at 6 AM, dropped the tailgate, and by kickoff the entire setup was a monument to the Dawgs. That old cooler had more history than Sanford Stadium itself. These kids today with their canopy tents and bluetooth speakers will NEVER know the magic of a busted lawn chair. That was the real Georgia.
Watched these spring practice clips and all I hear about is spread this, tempo that, RPO this. Nobody runs the damn option anymore and it breaks my heart. I remember the 1979 Sugar Bowl when we ran that wishbone to perfection, Barry Krauss and those boys just pounding the rock, the quarterback reading the end man on the line of scrimmage, the fullback hitting the hole. That was football. That was Alabama football.
You watch what Georgia Tech used to do with that triple option back in the 90s, how theyd control the clock for 40 minutes and make your defense quit by the fourth quarter. Now everybody wants to throw it 50 times a game and run these fancy motions. The option is a dying art and thats a shame. Coach Bryant understood that you dont need all that window dressing when you can line up and make a man block a man and let the quarterback make one simple read.
These new coordinators coming in with their binders full of analytics and formations have never felt the beauty of watching a perfectly executed option pitch. The mesh point, the timing, the discipline it takes. Its poetry. Now its all about NIL and highlight reels. Give me the old days when we ran the wishbone and dared you to stop us. That was real football.
Mark my words: Texas flips the turnover margin completely in 2026 and that alone pushes them into the CFP top four. The Longhorns finished 112th nationally last season at -0.6 per game, and that's the single biggest fixable issue Sarkisian has. You don't finish top 15 in yards per play and lose multiple games because of talent. You lose because you gave the ball away 18 times and only took it 12. The coaching staff has made this the explicit spring emphasis and you can see it in how they're drilling ball security in every practice clip. By October this team will be top 30 in turnover margin and people will act surprised. The data was ALWAYS there. The execution just wasn't.
You watch Oregon stack five 5-stars in one class and I just think back to the 1980s when Vince Dooley would find a raw kid from a south Georgia mill town, hand him a scholarship on a handshake, and turn him into an All-SEC lineman by his junior year. NIL turned recruiting into...
You watch Oregon stack five 5-stars in one class and I just think back to the 1980s when Vince Dooley would find a raw kid from a south Georgia mill town, hand him a scholarship on a handshake, and turn him into an All-SEC lineman by his junior year. NIL turned recruiting into...
The portal window being moved to winter only is the best thing that could have happened for us and nobody wants to admit it. Spring window meant our guys were getting poached during dead periods when we couldnt even fight back. Now every transfer decision happens in one concentrated window where our staff can actually evaluate needs and allocate NIL resources without scrambling. This benefits programs with stable coaching staffs and clear identities. We are not rebuilding. We are reloading. And the teams that relied on spring portal band-aids are the ones sweating right now because they cannot plug holes mid-stream anymore. This rule chnge quietly favors the programs that actually develop talent instead of just collecting rentals.
My uncle's 1998 Camry smelled like boiled peanuts and hope every home game. We pulled into the North Campus lot at 6 AM, dropped the tailgate, and by kickoff the entire setup was a monument to the Dawgs. That old cooler had more history than Sanford Stadium itself. These kids today with their canopy tents and bluetooth speakers will NEVER know the magic of a busted lawn chair. That was the real Georgia.
Stop pretending the family atmosphere Josh Brooks talks about is just a marketing slogan. When our AD says he has over a thousand nieces and nephews, he means every single player who walks through those doors at Georgia lmao. That culture is why we reload istead of rebuild. You watch these other programs year through 40-50 transfers in one offseason like Oklahoma State and Colorado. Meanwhile we have players who actually want to be here, who buy into the system, and who develop over multiple years. That is the difference between a program built on relationships and one built on rental agreements. Oregon can stack five-stars and bring in Dylan Raiola all they want, but they do not have that continuity. They do not have a kid like Kaiden Prothro committing early because he grew up dreaming of running through that tunnel between the hedges. Our family culture is not just about feeling good, it is about winning when it mat...
Stop pretending the family atmosphere Josh Brooks talks about is just a marketing slogan. When our AD says he has over a thousand nieces and nephews, he means every single player who walks through those doors at Georgia lmao. That culture is why we reload istead of rebuild. You watch these other programs year through 40-50 transfers in one offseason like Oklahoma State and Colorado. Meanwhile we have players who actually want to be here, who buy into the system, and who develop over multiple years. That is the difference between a program built on relationships and one built on rental agreements. Oregon can stack five-stars and bring in Dylan Raiola all they want, but they do not have that continuity. They do not have a kid like Kaiden Prothro committing early because he grew up dreaming of running through that tunnel between the hedges. Our family culture is not just about feeling good, it is about winning when it mat...
Everyone pointing at Florida's red zone TD rate at 87th nationally and calling that the main issue is missing the bigger picture. That number looks bad on its own, but context matters. Florida finished 112th in red zone scoring percentage overall, meaning they were settling for field goals at an alarming rate. When you combine that with a defense that ranked 94th in red zone touchdown prevention, you get a team that lost five one-score games. The red zone is where games are won and lost, and Florida was losing the battle on both sides of the ball. The Gators had the ball inside the 20 on 42 drives last season and only came away with touchdowns on 22 of them. That is a 52 percent touchdown rate in the red zone, which is borderline unacceptable for a Power Four program. For comparison, Texas converted at a 68 percent clip in the red zone last season, which ranked 22nd nationally. The Longhorns also held opponents to a 54 percent touchdown rate inside the 20, good for 18th in the country. That is a 14 percent swing in red zone efficiency between Texas and Florida, and it shows up in the win column. Texas went 10-3 last season while Florida stumbled to 6-7. The red zone is not a sexy stat, but it is the single most predictive metric for winning close games. Florida needs to fix this or they will keep hovering around .500 no matter who is at quarterback.
You want to know what really gets me going about this whole offseason talk? Its the complete disappearance of the walk on culture at Alabama. I remember when I was sitting in the stands at Legion Field back in 1989 and we had a kid from some little town nobody ever heard of who showed up to tryouts with nothing but a dream and a work ethic that would make you ashamed to complain about anything. That kid became a special teams legend and stayed for four years and never asked for a dime. Now everything is about who can bring the biggest NIL bag or which portal shopping spree lands the most five star names. Coach Stallings built championship teams off the backs of walk ons who wanted it more than the scholarship guys. The new CFP structure and the revenue sharing model and all this nonsense about the SEC Championship game being on the chopping block just tells me we have lost the soul of what made this program special. You cannot buy heart and you cannot portal your way into a kid who will bleed crimson because his daddy did and his granddaddy did before him. I miss the days when a walk on from a town of 500 people could earn a scholarship by pancaking a starter in August two a days. That is real football. That is Alabama football.
Three years and we still cannot get a straight answer on whether the SEC is gonna leave the NCAA or not. Kirby hinting at it on Finebaum and all I can think about is the 1992 season when we finally got the conference championship game and it meant something real. Now its all about TV markets and revenue sharing and nobody talks about the actual toughness it takes to win in this league. We got Tennessee State coming to Athens this fall and I guarantee you those boys will hit harder than half t...
Everyone pointing at Florida's red zone TD rate at 87th nationally last season and saying that's the main issue is missing the bigger picture. That number is a symptom, not the root cause. The Gators were -8 in turnover margin and forced the 3rd fewest turnovers in the SEC. You can't score in the red zone when you're constantly playing from behind because your defense can't get off the field and your offense is starting every drive inside your own 25 after a turnover.
The $11.2M assistant pool is the real fix here. Jon Sumrall just spent that money specifically on coordinators who have track records of fixing exactly these two problems. The new OC comes from a system that ranked top-20 in red zone efficiency at his last stop. The DC built a defense that led the Sun Belt in takeaways last year. This isn't about one stat. It's about a program that was broken in multiple phases and is now being rebuilt from the ground up with actual financial commitment.
If Florida cleans up the turn...
Five-stars. We keep hearing about Oregon stacking five of them and Texas loading up and Georgia locking down elite talent. Meanwhile our 2026 class is sitting there with exactly zero five-stars on the 247 composite and I am supposed to be patient. The crystal balls are quiet on the top-end guys and that scares me more than anything.
I keep watching the five-star tracker every single morning hoping to see a flip or a silent commit pop up for us. Sources close to the program keep telling me we are in good shape with a couple elite targets but talk is cheap until the NIL bag hits the table and the LOI comes through. We cannot keep winning the portal battles and losing the blue-chip wars if we want to hang with Ohio State and Oregon in this league.
The dead period is the worst time for this anxiety because there is nothing to do but refresh the 247 page and stare at the same rankings. We need at least one five-star to anchor this class or we are going to get left behind while the SEC ...
You see these offenses now with the option looks they run and I just laugh. Real option football was watching the 1980 team run the wishbone where the fullback took the beating and the quarterback read the end man on the line of scrimmage every single snap. None of this read-option handoff to the boundary nonsense. Coach Dooley had those boys running triple option out of the I formation and you knew when we got to the fourth quarter the defense was gassed from chasing those fullbacks downhill...
Remember when recruiting meant spending Saturdays at a kid's kitchen table with a stack of VHS tapes and a handshake? Barry Alvarez built those 90s teams by outworking everybody, not outspending them. Now it is all about who flsahes the biggest NIL bag first and the portal is ...
Just saw Yormark talking about the revenue gap keeping him up at night and it reminded me of the 1990s when we scraped by on half the budget of Texas and still went to bowls. We found players nobody wanted and Coach Sullivan turned them into ballplayers. Now it is all about how much money you can throw at a kid before he signs. I miss the days when a kid picked us because his daddy watched Bob Lilly play and he wanted to wear purple.
Everybody sitting here talking about Lane Kiffin's mouth and Ausberry having to clean it up for LSU is missing what actually matters. The real problem is how these SEC officials let star coaches run their mouths all offseason while the actual on-field calls get worse every year. I watched three separate games last season where we got absolutely hosed on targeting reviews and PI calls that cost us drives. Matt Sumrall knows what the deal is. He's not out here making headlines he's quietly bui...
You can keep your fancy new stadiums with the club seats and the luxury boxes and the Wi-Fi in every concession stand. Give me Legion Field on a November afternoon when the wind was cutting through that old horssehoe and you could feel the history in every crack in the concrete. I remember sitting in the upper deck for the 1989 Iron Bowl watching us pound Auburn and the whole place was shaking from people stomping their feet. That stadium had soul, not like these sterile cookie-cutter places ...
Joey McGuire publicly daring Texas to come to Lubbock while his program finished outside the top 40 in SP+ last season is a bold move from a coach with a 16-21 record. Sarkisian's 11-win season and top 5 recruiting class give him all the leverage in that scheduling debate.
