aucom96

He's taken a blame everyone else approach, mostly. The guy was brought in to recruit and improve the offense. So far, he's managed half of that and shrugged off the other.

I get the JFIII vibes

A stupid article from Goodman, per usual. Coaching salary is a product of the previous model, now gone, but you don't just throw it away. Top coaches will still be the key to get big bank accounts to invest in your athletic programs. If you have a winning program to date, you aren't just going to "cut the coach's salary" to pay more for players. We have opened the door to a game with no rules and no real ability to make them. Even if you have a low paid staff and invest everything in your roster, you have no contracts to really build anything beyond one year. Your coaches have no real leverage now where their top players are concerned and the costs to keep a full roster, in football in particular, are going to be exponential if you want a prayer of competing at the top. That means the parties, fundraisers, expensive cajoling of broadcasters, boosters, sponsors, etc. is only going to have to increase by a large factor just to get the money to pay these players... on top of Taj Mahal type resident and training facilities, event venues, staffing and the like. You might pay less for on the field roles, but the year to year scramble that is current recruiting will increase off the field pay for administrators, scouts, evaluation, etc. Football, basketball and baseball bring in money, but you can't just pay them. As unions set in, you'll have to pay every "student athlete" something and that creates big questions for colleges who were never set up to be pro level ball and are not currently being afforded a legal infrastructure to operate like pro level ball. So yes, this is absolutely going to result in less money going to other programs or programs getting cut altogether. That's fairly obvious. You can cut Sankey's and Smart's salaries to pennies and that will still be the case. Then you have to deal with programs like Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina and probably three quarters of schools in college athletics having to face the reality of the financial stratification of their programs. How willing are these teams going to be to sink a black hole of money into middling to lower middling results? We're in that boat, too. Will watching Georgia, Ohio State, bama, Texas and the other NIL heavy hitters be enough to keep college football ratings worthwhile of this fat broadcast contracts they've subsisted on for so long? Players are getting paid and I certainly understand the moral arguments that lead to it, but from a business standpoint, their pay is now tied to a product. It's not a charity. And if the product is chaotic and built of a very shaky foundation, that goose and its golden eggs may be living on borrowed time.

That isn’t what is happening. What IS happening will result in a large amount of college football programs pulling investment in football, a highly stratified tier of elite and a pile of teams forever stuck in the middle with little opportunity for movement. Fan support will dwindle, viewership will dwindle and you’ll be left with a bad semi-pro league with low paid talent. The reality of this for the players may not be as rosey in the near future.

I have never been less excited about Auburn football. This game is about to die and the "shared revenue" is about to be a lot of pieces of a rapidly shrinking pie.

I hope you’re right, but it looks to me that even more successful teams like UGA and bama are having to overpay just to keep depth. The average NFL career is only around 3 years, so I expect the price tags to keep rising for everyone and those who have the money will compete, the rest will forever swim in the middle. You no longer will have the luxury of 2-4 years with a diamond in the rough you developed or a key recruiting win you can build a team around. If Coleman blows up this season, we’ll have to blow the bank up to keep him a second yea, not to mention the offensive linemen on the bench South Carolina may have to overpay for to patch another year’s rotation. Compared to overpaying for 10 or so guys in round ball, football is going to be really tough to show ROI in for the future.

I'm not sure football's can. Projected numbers I last saw have 8 teams in conference ahead of Auburn in available NIL dollars and we're way behind the likes of Texas, UGA, A&M and Alabama. Football is a sport with so many moving pieces that being behind will likely cement you in place with NIL. With basketball, I don't think that's as much the case. I know who Auburn is and know all the money is going to go to football, but in terms of purely investment, it's probably the worst sport for us to dump money into. Cincy and UCF understand that, but they don't have the football history.

Not really. It’s about how much a school’s boosters can pony up, and Auburn blows everything on a middling football team.

Those days are done. The game is OL, QBs and WRs, period. We had decent backs and have had decent backs throughout our slump. We've had only two QBs worth a flip in nearly a decade, we've never had top receivers and Gus didn't think we needed an offensive line. Our success this year is going to be Peyton Thorne. The line should be somewhat improved. WRs should be quite a bit better. If he can rise to that talent level around him, we could see 8 wins. If the guy who took the field against Maryland shows up, we might match last year's record. I don't expect our rushing numbers to change very much.

And every team we play next year is going to be baiting that guy to do just what Yale got him to do and the refs - just like with Yale - will be waiting for it. And it will cost us. There's a reason the teams annually showing up deep in the tourney stay there. They play disciplined ball. CBM is a talented player, but the word's out on him now. If he can't reign it in next season, he'll be on the bench one way or the other and if he can't play his best while reigning it in, this is as far as his basketball journey is going to go.

Yale knew perfectly well they could bait Mazara and they did and it worked. Pearl knew KD was an out of control turnover machine and still had him in the game in critical moments. Pearl has weaknesses that blueblood coaches tend to minimize. He gets a lot out of less talent than others, but getting over the hump in terms of tourney play is going to continue to be a challenge because of discipline... because that's when it's needed the most.

I’m thinking 7-5 as well. If we have more New Mexico State type games, could just match last year’s record.

Maybe when it becomes apparent we can’t afford a playoff football team, more money will come back to basketball. We have a much better shot of championship level play in that sport now.