soulpatch

You know, I don't think this is really the crux of it (just speculating and first to admit I could be wrong). At that level, I imagine it's about creating challenges for yourself. As much BK to LSU was about removing some barriers to winning, I'm sure a part was just getting restless and wanting a new challenge. I'm sure some part of it is an 'f u' to the administration. By now, we can be reasonably confident that Harbaugh has this sort of dickishness in his personality. But, I'm sure another part is an F U to San Fran. Another is probably a realization that there is no time to play his hand than right now. Another part a realization that he probably doesn't get a better season at UM. And, i'm sure, part of it I just need a new challenge to keep my edge.

Amber Theoharis NFL had a tweet (since deleted) that he's going NFL. She left up the tweet that it's all finalized and an announcement is coming. Personally, I see him making the leap. No real reason to stay anymore and he can cash out (and probably get more control).

Amorion Walker? 😎

But, to my untrained/underinformed eye, this makes it easier for ND to compete here since it's now 'legal' for a player to get money based on their NIL. We have a contract with NBC, all on our own, for heaven's sake. As I mentioned in another thread, we already have booster money funneling directly to coaches via sponsorship. Now that we can do it and be above board, it reads to me our only limitation is our imagination. I mean, how hard can it be to for ND's next superstar QB to be seen as a marketing goldmine? I don't think you should have to look too far to find somebody/company ready to jump at the chance to be associated with that. This is where I'm coming from when I say if ND loses in the frontier, it will be for lack of trying, not lack of opportunity/resources.

Signed ~ Bears Fan 😉

No surprise to you that I'm in the piece of the pie camp but I think some of my other points got lost in my frustration/translation, so I'll try to re-raise them here in the hopes of moving that part of the dialogue forward. It's no secret that the overwhelming majority of programs (and high schools) actively discourage players from focusing on their education in order to remove distractions. Additionally, it's generally accepted that at least CFB and CBB blue chips have been getting paid at least as far back as the '70's (and these payments drive where they go, including transfers). So, in light of that, what part of this feels like a change to you? Is it that it's more overt? Is it that the increase in financially-driven mobility will feel like free-agency and you find contending with that as part of the CFB experience impalatable?

I'm not coming here lamenting the demise of education at the hands of NIL.

Is NIL a development that introduces the problem of collegiate football players not receiving an education, erodes loyalty or destroys some bedrock of commitment that underpins college football today? I mean, we're not actually suggesting that are we? College football generates BILLIONS of dollars of revenue annually. It is a business. If you're viewing it as something else, that's a self-delusion, full stop. Is loyalty that thing Nick Saban gets twice a month that keeps him at Bama or the 96-million things that kept Mel Tucker at MSU? Where was the commitment to the thousands of Tyrone Prothro's that have been chewed up and spit out of the system? And, really, education? Are we still saying "student-athlete" with a straight face? NIL is going to be about players that perform at the upper-reaches of the sport and are, for all intents and purposes, professional athletes building a career. Those are players that the system sees as building a career as early as middle school (and treats them as such). If we're saying that college is the one part of that whole journey where we should pretend like they're around for anything other than money/prestige, we're kidding ourselves.

There is a valid point in that this landscape is so nascent that the hardening that's occurred in other professional sports isn't in place. But, it's a leap to suggest A) players are signing one year deals and that B) those deals will be max contracts. As has already been covered in this thread, TAMU is layering multiple years on a deal. Granted, those terms likely won't be watertight across the life of the NIL agreement, but multi-year will be there. And, there really isn't such a thing as a max contract. I mean, sure, a school could come along and offer an extra [insert dollar figure] but what's to stop the homeschool from matching (or writing in first-right-of-refusal) language? Undoubtedly, the current NIL system is going to introduce new problems and going to be improved upon as humankind reacts and adapts to it. This is true of every system made by man. But, we're in here anticipating a bunch of problems/solutions and one thing is for sure about human beings - we're pretty shitty at predicting the future. This is now the system and it solves for a very real, absolutely pervasive problem - that the people making the actual product get an infinitesimally small portion of the financial benefit from the system compared to many people that just ride the coattails of the product (e.g. - it's an absolute joke that the gameday crew is criticizing players for sitting out bowl games while their collection millions of dollars for simply talking about bowl games). What happens next is to see the system play out and evolves out. I still stand by what I said earlier - if ND fails to be competitive in this new frontier it will be due to a lack of imagination and motivation rather than a lack of resources. I don't see anything today that says we can't uphold a high standard while also leveraging NIL to benefit players and the program.

Are we really suggesting that Ball State's "competitiveness" is going to get meaningfully worse because blue bloods are going to pillage their talent pool? How often is Auburn going there to take players? And, do we need to maintain the universities' amount of control over players or is the bigger problem giving players that are making a career out of this more mobility?

Now? It's been all about money for decades. The fact that the education component is presented as anything but window dressing for elite, blue-chip talent is just theater. If Nick Saban wants to sell his free house so Tyrone Prothro can get a monthly stipend to compensate for his career ending before he started getting paid for it, sure, let's talk about the damage this is going to do. If you're giving $96M to Mel Tucker, we can't say that kid putting his championship team over the top should take his scholarship and shut his mouth.

If a perennial top-five earning program that has its own network to broadcast its games can't compete with NIL, than that's on them. As others (and I've previously) said, everybody's been gettin' rich off this except the players so it's only right that they finally get a piece of the pie. No it's just a matter of figuring out how to be competitive on this new frontier. If we fail, it will only be due to imagination/willingness ...resources and ethics should have very little/nothing to do with this. I mean, our coaching titles are commercialized ffs. Just extending that to players would pay huge dividends (the debartalo starting QB, your NBC captains, etc.)

I'm sure this will open all kinds of cans of worms but, ultimately, I think the players deserve a cut of the pie. It all crystalized for me when OSU's Compliance Manager got exposed in Pryor-gate. Homeboy was pulling in high-6/low-7 figures and got the axe for not doing his job (i.e., training the program to never put incriminating information in writing). If someone like that is pulling in that kind of scratch, there is money to go around and why not give it to the people that are actually making the product?

Power rushing is hard to get historical metrics on. But, you can see looking at '17 that we didn't have WR's grabbing any meaningful rushing yards, so jet sweeps weren't much of a factor (https://www.footballdb.com/college-football/teams/fbs/notre-dame/stats/2017). Wimbush did pile up rushing yards so the option was an element of the ground game but this team was able to rush the ball as evidenced by the crazy imbalance between passing yards and rushing yards. That year, if we were gonna win, it was gonna be on the ground. By and large, this was successful as evidenced by our 11-2 record (a 7-win swing from the prior year's 4-8 record). This included absolutely torching an NC State defense whose strength was its run defense (headlined by future top-5 pick, Bradley Chubb). Josh Adams 1,400 yard season had more than its fair share of up-the-gut runs churning out yardage.

The 2017 rushing offense (Harry Heistand's fifth and final year as Oline coach) was a historic rushing game that single-handedly carried that offense. It's fair to note that Harry had some rough, initial, years where the rushing offense continued it's disturbing trend of poor power performance. By the end, that rushing offense ran for a whopping 270 y/gm and could pick up tough yards as well as it could break long runs. That was one of the best olines we'll ever see at ND.

Man, didn't know a thing about this kid but gotta say that I can't get past his revival of the Jeff George look. Hard to view him as anything other than an uber-arm-talented me-too QB based on that first impression (unfair, I know. But Jeff George has unfortunately burned himself into the deep recesses of my mind).

Crystal Ball'd for us by Wiltfong this afternoon.

Looking at 247 composite across oline, I'd say Bama and A&M are the only two in this class's league. 4 top 27 guys. Bama has two top 10 and TAMU, potentially, three top 12. This is a FFS oline class. Way to go Tommy and co.

Congrats to them both. They've put forward everything I could have hoped for as a fan (and more). I'm excited to see how their pro-careers play out and wish them all the best.

that's what I seemed to remember, as well

I'm struggling to remember the Cooks era. Is that when our DB's struggled to play the ball in the air? I know that he preceded Bobby D as DC which isn't a ringing endorsement since we made that change for a reason.

Um, are we going to view something as more legitimate b/c it came from SI, USA Today or Bristol?!? I mean, if any sort of places are pumping out confirmation bias, it's the ones publishing to the masses. I know nothing about this site but clicking the link, I wouldn't say that it reads as an ND-biased one since they doled out an "A" to Lincoln Riley. Just seems like someone that puts an emphasis on the value of recruiting, which might explain the Kelly grade. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This will seem small but, as someone that works in large-scale organizational change, this is a very promising start. These are A) great main focal points B) extensible into any part of the program any time of year and C) (and most importantly) super easy to internalize and retain. You want to reset status quo, this is precisely the sort of thing you do. FWIW, I f'ing LOVE "Challenge Everything". You see that in his defense, it suggests that the program will make shared accountability/candor a core principle and it fits ND's unique offering like a glove (a culture of over-achievers that exceed expectations in all phases of their life).

A few random thoughts. I know there were turnovers and they were facing a QB they weren't able to scheme against, but OSU got dunked on that first half. Initially, they gave the run game some problems but the freshman QB chewed them up something fierce, spraying the ball all over the field. Until he got hurt, OSU D was on it's heels. Secondly, it's time to change ND's history in the Fiesta Bowl. Particularly against OSU's. Can't come into this game looking past our opponent and have to treat them like a team that was an inch away from CFP and will arrive with a chip on its shoulder. Remember that first OSU? '01 ND fans gave a lowly TJ Houshmandzadeh and future HOF'r, Chad Freekin Ochocinco zero respect and got a nice, crisp kick in the teeth in response. So, basically, ignore what I wrote in my first point and treat this team like they have HOF'r's littered across their skill positions.

Confused by the question (specifically, why it's directed at me). I mean, no. 🤷‍♂️