rcade

If I fired you and had to pay you $1.6 million to do nothing for the next 12 months, would you be bitter, or would it be the greatest thing that happened to you other than the birth of your children or the day you first tried Sriracha hot sauce?

There isn't an FBS program that would accept a ceiling of .500 with losses in almost every bowl game, conference championship game and big OOC game.

When you leave without making a single public statement to anybody, not even one thanking the players or expressing any gratitude for a seven-year opportunity that sends you out of town as a multimillionaire, you're bitter. Seth Littrell got big support in Denton. Only one coach in the conference had a higher salary. There was even a bowl game created for his team by an alumnus in 2021 so the Mean Green wouldn't miss a bowl at 6-6. People are going to say Littrell didn't owe us any comment after being fired. That is true. It is also true he was as bitter as a dank IPA.

He got plenty of appreciation. His salary was huge compared to his predecessors, the football program got significant financial outlays during his time in Denton and fans supported his teams when they were good. There was no reason for him to be such a bitter Betty on the way out the door. UNT gave him at least one more season than his record deserved.

Boo him 50 percent of the time and cheer him 50 percent of the time.

I will be surprised if the expanded playoff slows down the rate of players who sit out for the NFL Draft. So many athletes are skipping bowls for the draft or the portal that a lot of bowls feel like the start of the next season instead of the end to this one. FSU isn't the team that went undefeated any more with five stars skipping the Orange Bowl and even QB Tate Rodemaker hitting the portal instead of playing.

There isn't enough aloe vera in Texas to treat that burn.

FSU putting "member" in quotes like that is chef's kiss.

It's not the size of your endowment, it's what you do with it.

The only financial problem FSU has is the ACC's TV deal. When FSU joined the ACC in 1991, they had to raise $7 million a year to keep up with elite teams in other conferences. Now the gap is $30 million. One of their trustees said today that if you take out TV revenue, FSU's athletic spending is the seventh highest in the FBS. He said, "It's one thing to fundraise and make up $7 million. It's another entirely to make up over $30-to-40 million annually." https://www.tallahassee.com/story/sports/college/fsu/2023/12/22/fsu-acc-takeaways-lawsuit-grant-rights-deal/71890649007/ FSU is going to chew its leg off to get out of the ACC beartrap just like SMU did the AAC.

FSU's lawsuit against the ACC is citing the "lack of football value" brought by SMU, Cal and Stanford, compared to the schools that other Power 4 conferences added. I wouldn't be so sure that SMU joining the ACC is still an improvement for them. If FSU and the other big schools leave, the ACC could fall apart like the PAC-12. Then SMU is floating on a headboard in the Atlantic.

It's cool that some fans travel to games but the overall fanbase contains a lot more people who don't have the time or opportunity so they watch those games on TV. I don't think the Mean Green would benefit from being on TV less. There would be some benefit to home game attendance but it would significantly drop the number of alumni who follow the team. One of the biggest problems with CUSA was the low-quality TV production that made games look small time.

Why is it more special to not be able to see your team's games every week? Rare is for steak and Pokemon cards, not sporting events. Being able to see every Mean Green game in Florida is glorious.

I find the complaints weird too. There should be as many bowls as there are cities and committees that want to run them and fans who want to go to them. Is a 6-6 team playing another 6-6 team in Shreveport going to be remembered forevermore? Probably not. But it's still a chance for two teams to mark a season with a celebratory trip to a bowl with everything that goes along with it, like a banquet where they get to put on ties, hear some speeches and eat chicken, mashed potatoes and chocolate pudding. If there was a vote for more college football or less, I am voting more.

If you put a player in your schedule graphic and he leaves, fans of the other 132 schools mock you mercilessly. It is much better to put Morris on there looking back at all the teams we are passing by.

Player enters the portal. Damn! I hate that guy! I hope he ruptures his spleen! Player changes mind, exits portal. Yes! What a guy! Heart of a champion! Of course we let good players come back. We need them. Any heartache we felt when they tried to leave can be worked out with our therapist.

I will remember that he put up 3,000 passing yards but my fondness ends when he transfers. My love was conditional on a second season. If he's a distant relative of my Rogers kin I won't talk to him at the reunion.

I saw a car today with "Peter Boulware Toyota" on the back and it made me think about the star college athletes who turn it into fan adulation for decades afterwards. Boulware spent four years at FSU, got his degree, then declared for the NFL draft. The time he spent in Tallahassee forever ties him to the school. In five years, will any fans of Southern Miss, Blinn, Louisiana-Monroe, North Texas or his final school care that Chandler Rogers played for them? Will former teammates or students care? These portal players will leave the sport with money but no reason to think their glory days in sport meant any more than that.

There is one thing I am hanging my hat on as a Mean Green fan: Morris delivered a fantastic offense in his first season. Give me more of that with even an average defense next year and we're looking good Mr. Kotter.

Kirk Herbstreit was laying the groundwork to exclude FSU from the playoff for a week before the game. He might want to avoid coming to Tallahassee for the next several decades.

His comments in the article are the bargaining step in the College Coach Stages of Grief. If the financial miracle does not happen at UTSA, his next stage is acceptance (of a job at a bigger school) or depression (if he waited too long because they wouldn't also hire his coaches and now he's stuck a Roadrunner for life or until he goes .500 for too many years).

Has anyone seen articles about what the NIL collectives in the AAC are spending? I'd like to know what kind of money has to be spent to bring in the top skill players at our level of the FBS.

The comments by Jeff Traylor in this article about long-term athletic funding concerns at UTSA sounds a lot like what UNT officials and fans have said over the years. UTSA had $37 million in athletic expenses in 2021-22, fifth lowest among AAC schools and $7 million below UNT. He says at the end, "Do we just want to be a stepping stone? Do we just want to be a minor league? Is that just OK? I just don’t see this city that way. I don’t see this university that way. I don’t see myself that way. I know we can do it. It’s just, we need a miracle." https://www.expressnews.com/sports/colleges/utsa/article/utsa-aac-finances-18331333.php https://archive.is/GlbpR

That reminds me of how FSU and the ACC are now experiencing the playoff delegitimization that UCF and the AAC experienced in 2017. Life comes at you fast.

Clemson's problem is that their head coach was so good at the old way of winning that he stubbornly refused to change what he was doing. Now he's known more for hating the portal than working it. I wish he could prove that you can still recruit and develop to win but it doesn't seem viable any more.