aucom96

That’s the big question and from the look of things so far, I’m not so sure. I fear a lot of teams are going to be forced to readjust their traditional view of where they stand due to NIL making everything purely about booster dollars.

You haven’t made the move to AltaVista yet?

Dye brought the Iron Bowl to Auburn and put us on top of the conference. He made Auburn a team people expected to see in the polls every year. Shug, I can get the argument for. He was a great man and as great a representative of Auburn as they come. Outside of those two, only Tuberville deserves to be in the conversation in my mind. Chizik got us a championship, but I can't help but feel he started us on a path that now has us scrambling to catch up with the Mississippi schools rather than expecting to beat Georgia or Alabama every year. Gus aggravated the situation and Harsin punched the accelerator right into the wall. I just hope we get another candidate in the years to come.

The NFL would be run at the behest of the owners in partnership with the player's union. Who "runs" college football in a pay world? The universities? Some sort of booster collective? The broadcasters? I think this thing is far more messy than some give it credit for.

Even if we are in the "haves", I suspect we'll be in the middle, at best, and with Texas and OU, maybe lower middle. It just being a question of booster money now, this entire thing only gets more tenuous with unions and seems much more dependent on inflated TV contracts which are probably going to wither as the effects of NIL take hold on the game itself. What is morbidly interesting to me is how much interest college football will continue to generate when the "haves" grow increasingly fixed in place and the "have nots" drop investment in the game altogether.

Double edge to that. Those with the biggest money will have the best results. That isn't going to be fan collectives. That's Jimmy Rane or Harbert. And if our success is now tied primarily to booster money, I don't think that's going to work out well for us. It's not going to work out well for a lot of schools who are used to more success in their sports programs. NIL is garbage. The portal rules are garbage. Both will eventually kill the golden goose both for fans and the players. The boosters will still be rich.

Yeah, that's really the only potential upside I saw to his game... in potential. He's not physical enough to drive in the post and isn't a good defender. Oats offense has a definite quality of jack the threes and pray, so he probably fits right in. I hope he sucks there and we beat him by 100. Bottom line, we needed a real PG and his wasn't and isn't it. Hopefully we found one.

Which, these days, is the only game that matters.

Holloway is more salary he has to carry, more he has to convince boosters to spend, more Holloway will have to prove to justify it, same as here. No player has to stick around for four years and no program has to continue to pay their assumed market value, either. I doubt we had to money to wait for Aden to grow into his rep. It will be the same story at bama, if he chooses to go there.

And until we become that way, we're going to be permanently middle of the pack to suck. This isn't a four year game. It's a one year game and QBs are where it starts and ends.

Does it really matter in this era of college athletics? You are what you can pay. We can buy middle of the pack in football and maybe slightly better in basketball. There's always been some element of this, but I feel like the ceilings are fixed, now. I was in Auburn the past few days and it's a different town. The pickups are now Landrovers. The pizza joints and college dives are now high end restaurants and lounges. The small town charm is now stuffed with condos, the tailgates are purchased at top dollar and so are the seats to games. We aren't mediocre, we're just a defined product, now. Being a fan at any level for a college team is going to be more difficult for everyone without letting go of a lot of how we're used to perceiving the game. That's just the way it is.

You're dodging. Is there a significant monetary value to what college athletes were getting pre-NIL to play major sports? Obviously, they placed value on it or the sport would not have thrived from lack of participation. It isn't college football's fault that the NFL and to a lesser extent, NBA don't have the instant out of school developmental employment that baseball has. They can profit off their likeness now. Good. But the door has been left wide open to something that will benefit no one. I don't really care how much time you've spent working with student athletes. When the scholarships are no longer there and the booster money starts drying up from diminishing returns at these schools, I can promise you what they used to have won't seem so valueless anymore.

What does "boomers" have to do with anything? Does a college tuition have a monetary value? Yes or no? Does food, board, training, coaching, national broadcast exposure plus a lot of other monetary benefits disclosed and undisclosed have monetary value? Now they get to fully participate in a "business". Part of that "business" is a product that people want to invest in and consume. The more this wild west show continues in college football, that product IS GOING to become less attractive and that will effect the money available both from boosters and those wanting to spend money for these player's likeness. It has nothing to do with boomers and it has nothing to do with your position with a university.

Yeah, the courts have made their decision. That's fine. Now the athletes will have to deal with the full brunt of "it's just business". I think there's this prevailing attitude of fat cats versus poor, innocent athletes and that was never true. Scholarships costs students across the board their time, effort and other sacrifices as a trade-off for money toward an education. The courts, as I understand it, ruled that athletes have the right to profit off sales from their likeness/trademark. That's not what NIL has become and what it HAS become will greatly diminish the amount of training these players receive, the injuries their upprepared bodies take because they're paid to start, ready or not. It will raise the price across the board for fans and for most teams, will diminish their ability to compete. More and more college programs will cut their investments in these sports because it's just not sustainable for them. The larger programs will have trouble keeping boosters happy who are pouring money into rosters that turn over every single year. More of the top coaches will get sick of not having any leverage on a blue-chip freshman who is pulling down a 7 figure salary and doesn't feel the need to show up for practice. If ESPN finally keels over or is bought out - which has been somewhat expected for years, now - then this sport and these players are in for a major reality check. The courts opened a massive can of worms and left the NCAA and universities practically no ability to manage the fallout and that fallout is going to be bad for everyone who watches, profits from or plays the game.

We'd better get the best we can from the portal, because it's hard for me to see Holloway as a starting PG next season. There's just too much still a project with him. I hate it. At times, Donaldson looked like a great player. He was just very inconsistent.

The players benefitted from a transaction where they got a free education of considerable value, free training, facilities, food, room and board also of considerable value and a forum to showcase their abilities to a professional industry at no charge to them. All of the above is still expected in addition to professional level pay with no contracts, terms or conditions. Eventually, either these players are going to find themselves in a professional employment infrastructure or we're going to continue this chaotic state we're in now, which over time, will result in bad football, lack of parity, reduced fan interest and subsequently, less pay available to these players. The golden goose will die and they can ply their trade with the Birmingham Stallions or their city semi-pro team for minimum wage. Regardless, the product that gave us NIL will ultimately be destroyed by NIL.

Good post. Thanks. If that depth chart proves out post-Spring, who do you expect to transfer?

Watching the teams in the tourney so far, it’s really obvious how much we need to significantly upgrade at both guard positions.

Nearly all portal QBs are gambles to some degree, but that's the game, now. Thorne is an example of this. But if the Thorne of last season shows up again this season, those WR freshman are going to cost a fortune to keep on the roster, regardless of how well they play. It's a year to year game now, and QB play is crucial, but we still appear to be taking the 4 year approach. With NIL, that's a bigger gamble than overpaying for a higher percentage QB in my opinion.

I said NIL, but was primarily referring to the portal. QB and receivers last season alone and lackluster movement towards addressing those needs going forward to date are enough to concern me, but we have a lot of holes to fill and Freeze seems content to rely on high school recruiting. It's a big gamble and could be an expensive one.

Freeze is a good recruiter. NIL is about money, period. To date, Freeze's NIL record is not what I'd consider stellar. However, someone at Auburn understands we need a staff of professional scouts and evaluators off the field for this purpose, so that's a positive. Freeze has often said he wants to build through high school, but this is now a year to year game. Saban didn't have anything left to prove and NIL sucks, so he got out. Freeze still has a lot to prove. Hopefully, he does.

I think the likely cost to NIL plus need for playing time makes this a difficult guy to handle as a project. He isn't physically at the level to play PG here and that's too important to take a risk on his shot coming back. Maybe move him to SG, but between the two, I think Donaldson is a better option today and Jones better at the other guard position. If we go out and get a solid PG in the portal, hard to see Holloway wanting to stick around or us shell out the NIL bucks to keep him.

Good defender, but I won't miss the turnovers and kamikaze runs in the paint. Good luck to him. He was certainly responsible for some fun moments and always good with the energy.

The ball handling has been suspect. KD is a human turnover. Holloway just seems to small and non-physical to be in that position and Donaldson is very inconsistent. What I saw against Yale was a team not used to playing a tight game ahead. We just completely came apart from a fundamentals standpoint. We had little awareness, made sloppy passes, missed open looks, couldn't make free-throws, it's clearly a team that needs a leader and doesn't have it yet.

BP should retire here if he wants to. All this rumor talk about his son having to take his place to keep him here, no. Bruce made Auburn a fun place to watch basketball. He got us a Final Four banner. He turned our new and at the time controversial arena into an envied home advantage. In terms of pure basketball, I suspect he's peaked. Without better guard play, I just don't see us making another 2019 type run and Bruce doesn't seem to see it that way. I think NIL is going to ruin college football, but may be workable in college basketball with NBA developmental leagues and the like, so I hope someone can come along and build on what Bruce built to one day truly make Auburn a basketball school.