Category Archives: The Portal Masters

So It Begins…Portal Masters at Stegeman

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Can’t say I’m shocked, but here goes the yearly merry go round that is college basketball roster management. Wilkinson played well early, faded a little in the middle of the SEC schedule, but was the leading scorer on the team for many of our games.

With our bottom of the league NIL spending in basketball, I foresee this to be a repetitive experience for many years to come, unless we see a significant shift in prioritizing funding after the team’s back to back early departure from the NCAA Tournament.

SEC: It Just Means Overrated?

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The conference laid a dud in the college football bowl season, then turns around and does it again in March Madness.

Some would argue that the conference beats itself up during the regular season, and annual viewership in football suggests that no one is unhappy with the in-season product, but why are we seeing some recency trends of the conference not showing up in the postseason? Are we truly overrated, or is there something more to it? Has NIL tipped in favor towards the B1G so much that we are seeing the beginning of the big money taking over big tradition?

Discuss.

If Only We Had More Pro Players, We Would’ve Won

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Folks, this is Alabama sports in a nutshell:

If only we could bring back Chubb, Michel, Dean, and Roquan, we could’ve beaten Ole Miss.

Whatever, Bammers.

He’ll Be Back

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Jesus.

Well, great. And we have to travel to Oxford. The one thing I can say we have going for us is revenge, and Gunner seems to be a guy who is hell bent on earning it. And Kirby is his head coach.

Something tells me that lessons will be learned that day. It’ll be Georgia’s third chance against this guy, it took four quarters in the first match, and we seemed to have him in the first two in the rematch. Now it’s time to have him in the first quarter.

If lessons are being learned, let’s hope they are learned in Georgia’s favor.

Pine Box Politics: Your 3/26/2026 Reminder that Auburn Still, Factually, Sucks

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Shot:

Chaser:

To be fair, Tuberville did sit out a year after Auburn before taking the Texas Tech job in 2010, but didn’t sit out when he abruptly left there to go to Cincinnati in 2012. While Pearl has aspirations as a politician and Tuberville currently is one, I’m not sure that former Auburn coaches really need to be weighing in on NIL, the Portal, or probably even politics.

As always, Auburn sucks.

Who’s Who Anymore

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Interesting infographic about the final 16 teams left in the NCAA Tourney. The fun part is taking a guess as to which team is composed of which.

Obviously, you can tell who some of the teams are, and it’s not surprising that a basketball purist like Tom Izzo would have the one roster of players that had all started at Michigan State and remained. Most of the top is pretty easy to identify, but the bottom, yeesh, take your pick.

Also, I didn’t realize that Mark Fox had become an assistant at Kentucky until someone made a comment about him during Kentucky’s farewell interviews after they lost.

For more perspective:

And as a chaser:

I guess the money moves the numbers, maybe.

Anyway, outside of Cain and Somto, most of Georgia’s group was unrecognizable this season and the season before that, and I’d imagine it’ll look much the same next season, too.

Who will still be there? Your guess is as good as mine.

Tournament Teams: Do We Have a Problem?

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This was hard to swallow.

Two consecutive years, two exact same results for both the football and men’s basketball programs. Lost twice to teams in the Sugar Bowl for football, and twice in the first round of the NCAA Tourney.

Two programs, two different issues, if you ask me. For our football team, I still question the wisdom of having a “bye” in the longest tournament on earth, and the freshness of the team coming off a long layoff. THe only body of work to compare it to for football would be the first round of the CFP in 2017, 2021, and 2022.

In three opportunities, Georgia found itself in a barnburner of a game that we were fortunate to win. In the 2018 Rose Bowl, an opportune kick by Blankenship before halftime and a fortunate field goal block allowed Georgia to get the W. Against Ohio State in the 2023 Peach, it took a missed kick to win in another barnburner. Georgia’s other openind round win was a comfortable whipping of Michigan in 2022, but we all know how Michigan would do if they didn’t have an abundance of tape and knowledge of play calls to win a game, so there’s that.

The Sugar Bowls that followed were equally frustrating in 2024 and 2025. I could give us a pass in 2024 due to injuries and breaking in a new quarterback in the biggest game of his young life. 2025, though, seemed to be a bit of a mystery with offensive production where it seemed every play ended with Gunner on his back or being folded like a lawn chair by yet another guy from Ole Miss’s defense. I saw these less as going up against unexpectedly better competition and more about a team having ample time to prepare for us and know our tendencies. Is it predictability (let’s face it, Notre Dame and Ole Miss both knew they were playing in the second round and would hardly have to lift a finger to beat their first round game) or is it cobwebs and rust from the bye?

For basketball, it’s been a Dr. Jekyl and Dr. Jekyl kind of endeavor, both times coming out flat and getting pistol whipped in both contests. Not even competitive. I’m not sure that anyone needed to prepare for a team that came out and treated the NCAA tournament with the same seriousness my friends had when we’d visit the SPACenter (now Ramsey Center) to play a pickup game of three on three. I don’t think that’s preparation of scheme, that’s somehow on the coach. Or does it lie somewhere else?

Football, even with the flaws of NIL and Portal, seems to have consistency in focus on messaging whereas basketball feels more like “who’s on our team this year…Blue Cain is just a junior? Feels like he’s been here seven years”. Is that White, or is that the nature of the game? How much does chemistry and consistency play a roll in postseason success in college basketball and is Mike White built for it?

Discuss.

Sunday in the Bizarro SEC

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Here’s an interesting statistic, one I’d never, ever expect to have heard at any point in my existence.

But don’t worry, it’s not just the SEC. Here’s another interesting tidbit from another conference:

And Indiana won a national championship in football. Hmmm.

Return on Investment: NIL Spending on SEC Basketball Teams

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You gotta ask yourself, is it worth it?

Fun part is, three teams on the left hand side of the ledger have already been bounced from the SEC tourney. South Carolina, yeah, that tracks. But Oklahoma and Ole Miss are still alive. One must think that baseball and basketball – where anything can literally happen any day when a round ball bounces the wrong way – are proof positive that anything is possible, money not withstanding.

And Alabama? Something tells me that doesn’t include legal fees accrued from defending Charles Bediako to come back for four games, right?

And one would think Kentucky would have better results, nearly doubling the expenses paid from the second team on the list, but it hasn’t.

Maybe money doesn’t buy everything, like we thought.

Hello, Texas. Cough.

Tampering? At the B1G, You Can Do That

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To say that the B1G has profited from the lawlessness of the Portal and NIL era while maintaining the integrity of the game and compliance with rules would be doing some heavy lifting. Let’s submit this evidence as proof:

Before you know it, we’ll have players leaving one team at halftime and coming back onto the field for the second half in another uniform. It’s no small wonder that the B1G would want to allow tampering to go unabated, I mean, after all:

It seems like it was the only way the B1G was going to break the SEC run of National Champions, amirite?