I’ll put this here:
Using this, do you see a particular athlete that Georgia missed on that would’ve made for a generational, program-changing player? Was it Lawrence? Derrick Henry? Arch Manning (joking)?
What’s your thoughts?
Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
NASCAR, amirite? To put it another way, if you can’t laugh at yourself…then you trust in Kirby.
Shot:
For context:
“Until the very end” might be the actual start when it comes to recruiting in Austin, Texas.
I hope he knows what he’s getting in to…
Maybe in Texas, “RBU” stands for “revenue brought you” to Austin, amirite?
By most recruiting agencies, Georgia is currently sitting with the #2 recruiting class for the 2026 cycle.
And over at Rivals…
But how much are the top classes shelling out in NIL funds to get this?
Odd, for all the money that’s being shelled out in Lubbock, it’s not translating over into success in the recruiting rankings.
And while we’re at it, let me throw in some context for your daily Auburn Sucks moment:
One interesting omission from the top spenders list is Notre Dame. I know they’ve got the money, definitely have the capacity to be the biggest spender in all of college football. Although this is from a certainly scientific survey from Nakos, it makes me wonder how much clarity and honesty regarding deals are really going to be reported even after the House Settlement.
I kid when I say that.
Anyway, Alabama and Georgia are still doing well despite not making the list. Why? Well, here’s Kirby’s take on it.
Gotta keep believing that CKS has the winning formula. He took one of Georgia’s “worst” teams in the last four years and beat one of Texas’s “best” teams in the Sarkisian era and beat them. Twice. Once at their place and again on a neutral site.
Is 2025 a defining moment in the Smart era at Georgia? Will it signal if the Smart way works in the face of the NIL era?
Pads start talking in 40 days.
This might be a first I’ve heard from the mouth of a football recruit. Sounds like he’s done his research.
Tell me where the kid is lying. Welcome to Athens, Mr. Abrams.
Now if he flips in a couple weeks and names the McCombs College of Business, we might be in trouble.
Shot:
Chaser:
Johnson flipped his commitment ten days-ish after committing to Georgia. Both Atkinson and Johnson had taken multiple trips to Athens over the years, and not unlike Justus Terry made the jump at the 11th hour.
Additional chaser:
All I can say is Sarkisian needs to win the SEC or better with all these top recruits and the money being thrown at them.
Tyriq Green (four star DB/S) selects the Dawgs over the Useless and Awwburn.
Tell me again the part where Kirby Smart struggles in the NIL era? It’s a compelling story.
Add another 5 star TE to the growing list of commitments for what has become TEU.
HBTFD!
While the title could be the mantra for Florida State football, this has nothing to do with fake championships (also looking at you, UCF) and rings for the “unconquered”. No, this is about NIL, and how the House Settlement hasn’t settled anything at all.
The finger pointing has already begun.
Schools are making big enough contract offers to recruits that they cannot possibly remain under college football’s new compensation cap, some coaches believe. Others are guaranteeing third-party NIL deals as part of the total compensation package to athletes — something against new revenue-share rules.
A few are doling out cash from their collectives to high school players in an attempt to induce their commitment — also against new rules. And those schools rich enough to have front-loaded millions of dollars in the spring to compensate this year’s roster — while perfectly within the rules — now hold an advantage in building next year’s roster.
“I don’t understand what rules everybody is playing by,” Cincinnati head coach Scott Satterfield says. “The whole point of this was for us all to be playing by the same rules, but we are not. We are not playing by the same rules, particularly this past spring when everybody is apparently front-loading where others are having to now spend their [revenue-share] cap.”
The finger-pointing is squarely aimed at the oil barons of Texas Tech, who moved quickly to front-load NIL deals before the House’s terms went into effect on July 1st.
In what’s been no secret, Texas Tech has used riches to fuel what’s become a recruiting juggernaut. The athletic program has spent more than $50 million on its athletes in both front-loaded money this past spring plus revenue-share dollars this coming academic year. That’s at least the front-loading of $30 million plus $20.5 million in rev-share.
Front-loading refers to the literal loading upfront of player contracts as school collectives paid out all or a majority of deals before the settlement’s implementation date of July 1. Deals paid out on July 1 and after are subject to the new enforcement system specifically created to prohibit booster and collective compensation.
Joey McGuire, the Texas Tech head coach, describes his recruiting approach as the byproduct of high-level university support, careful planning and an “aggression” that all schools should be taking to compete with the bluebloods of college football.
“What we do as a conference is so important, but we also got to do it off the field,” he told Yahoo Sports in an interview. “We’ve got to recruit at this level if we are going to continue to be in the same conversation as the SEC and Big Ten. We’ve got to understand as a conference that we’ve got to commit to that. We have committed to that at Texas Tech and eliminated any people saying, ‘Well, they can’t do it there.’” (emphasis added)
You mean to tell me that a regulation and set of rules hasn’t tamed recruiting and portal movement by July 10th, 2025? Consider me shocked.
Texas Tech doesn’t have the world’s toughest schedule this season, with signature games likely coming against BYU and Arizona State, and a daunting non-conference schedule that includes Arkansas (Pine Bluff), PAC-whatever-they’re-up-to juggernaut Oregon State, and Kent State. They well may have bought their ticket to the CFP, but will anyone actually fret over the fact that Tech bought their way into the playoff by beating the Settlement deadline to the punch?
I doubt it, given that no one said the same about Ohio State after being deemed the greatest playoff champion of all time by most social media pundits.
On the flip side…it makes me wonder if the same wasn’t going on in Athens as Kirby went on a recruiting tear in the last week of June. It’s not like Kirby was shy in expressing what was really going on in the NIL world, after all.
Wild, wild west, indeed.
I wonder if Hugh Sleeze is getting digits while hitting the links, because he damn sure isn’t getting recruits. While Kirby’s mantra of ABC – always be ‘cruitin – Freeze seems to have a different approach.
Matt Stahl, who writes for AL.com, raised the issue in a June 24 story headlined: “Which SEC football coaches are playing the most golf in 2025?” Stahl noted that Freeze recently had posted to the USGA’s Golf Handicap Information Network (GHIN.com) a score of 78.
“Unfortunately for Freeze,” Stahl wrote, “his honorable scoring record came under fire on social media and message boards on Monday, as the Tigers’ recruiting struggled. A trio of blue-chip prospects decommitted from AU over the past two weeks, and fans were unhappy after realizing how much time the coach was spending on the course.”
Whatever keeps your hands busy in productive ways, amirite?
This is your daily reminder that Auburn sucks.