Arkstfan

Likewise it was becoming clear that there was an incredibly serious risk that we could not feed ourself as a nation. There were no chemical fertilizers that were cost effective until the Harber-Bosch process was developed. Until then there were only organic fertilizers that were cost effective and mining of guano was a major industry. Fun trivia. During WWII the US laid claim to a number of small islands in the Pacific as potential bases. Several of them it turned out that US had actually claimed as territory in the 19th century because there were deep layers of hardened bird crap that were mined to use as fertilizer. Soil exhaustion was a critical issue. Erosion was a major crisis that finally came to a head during the severe drought that clobbered the Plains states and much of the south during the 1930's with some areas being in a drought for 8 years which led to the dust bowl. Norman Borlaug gave us the third key to food security (along with proper land management and chemical fertilizers) by developing the better strands of wheat that produced more grain per stalk and were more resistant to adverse weather. In span of basically 30-40 years the US went from struggling to feed itself to being a huge exporter of food. Along with teachers colleges and agriculture colleges, mechanical arts or engineering became a major function as the Industrial Revolution evolved into the modern assembly line and rapid product development especially consumer goods. It is really amazing that in the span less than forty years the US survived two major wars, three periods of food shortages, a deadly flu epidemic, an economic disaster that had as much as 25% unemployment and rode through most of it with a sense of optimism and community.

Teacher college or agriculture

That's about it.

It's FSU. I think about the great deal Chicago did with parking revenue. Did a 75 year lease and it took the equity group 13 or 14 years to make back the lump sum. I can just see Florida State doing a 50 year deal and within 10 realizing the investors have made their money back and the next 40 years is pure profit.

It took Utah 6 years to be competitive in the Pac-12, TCU needed three years in Big XII. In the G5 it's all over the place. Schools that left Sun Belt for CUSA as a group won more first two years in CUSA than in Sun Belt. UTSA was immediately competitive. JMU, Georgia Southern, Jacksonville, Liberty all immediately competitive. Georgia State and WKU moving up got blasted. It will be interesting to see how the new SEC and Big Ten teams do. TAMU did well, not win their division well but better than in Big XII well. Mizzou won the east in second and third years.

Go to the game next year. You can do all the fun stuff, stop at the Blind Tiger in Shreveport my favorite lunch spot when I worked down there, Flip off the Louisiana Tech this exit sign, say what's up to ULM, check out the battlefield at Vicksburg, throw out another what's up to USM. Best crab soup I've had in my entire life at Felix's Fish camp out by the battleship, eat char-grilled oysters at Wintzell's, snack on fresh roasted (roasted not boiled blech) peanuts at A&M Peanut House downtown and get some candy to snack on at your hotel. Grab breakfast downtown at Spot O Tea, the eggs cathedral get all the noise but the seafood eggs Benedict are banging. You've got Orange Beach nearby and Dauphin Island. Can do a quick in and out at the Mardi Gras Museum, Mobile will insist you not leave without knowing Mardi Gras in the US started there. Oh and some of you old heads might remember a poster from our board called FaninLa who was on the Independence Bowl board. He was at the museum out by the USS Alabama for one of the bowl games, discovered the F16 he flew when he switched from flying the F4 is in the museum and he mostly enjoyed the jokes about the museum trying to make him part of the display. He quit posting when he switched to a wife that liked him. I love Mobile. They have a great situation down there, LSU is actually the closest P5 program to the city. Means local TV guys can't personally cover Bama and Auburn except in rare situations because their stations won't pay the travel.

Texas State has a president who is very supportive of athletics. He was faculty athletic rep at OU for years, then chancellor (Campus CEO) at Arkansas State. That said, made an absolutely awful AD hire who "retired for health reasons" after a year and supported renewing an embarrassingly dreadful men's basketball coach, I think solely because his best player, a potential NBA caliber player had tweeted he was returning for another year. Coach gets a new two year deal instead of contract lapsing. Ink's barely dry and Da U's Lifelock funded NIL bought the kid on spring break when he went to Miami on spring break to visit his high school coach and he reportedly shopped the kid to Miami, FIU, FAU, UF, FSU, and GT. Not sure how the kid is able to sign an NIL deal on a student visa but immigration law ain't my bag. So they've got leadership that will back athletics but doesn't have best record of making good choices. If President Selfie has a good AD they'll do well.

They may be opposed but the city put together a fat package to get the Grizzlies. When they started shopping St Louis, Las Vegas, Anaheim, San Diego, New Orleans, Kansas City, Louisville, and Memphis were all in though Anaheim was supposedly the leader until the other show dropped. Anaheim wanted the owner to buy the then Mighty Ducks who were struggling to find a buyer. In the end came down to Memphis and Louisville and Memphis won out because FedEx promised more than Yum! Brands was willing to commit.

One thing I like about bowls is lead time. Now I missed the Camellia because I'd booked three nights at the lodge at Mt Magazine State Park (it's awesome, every room has a balcony overlooking the valley) so wife and I didn't get home until Thursday, game was Saturday. Just didn't have the energy to drive 6 1/2 hours. But it beat the playoff days in I-AA when you found out Sunday where you were on Saturday from a fan standpoint. Writer for the Athletic had a nice piece talking about how the "throwaway" G5 bowls are better than the P5 also ran games because so many in the P5 are conditioned to think season is failure without a playoff or NY6 bid.

OH one more thing. I do expect things to change up with the playoff. Next year what would normally be the first Saturday of the bowl season will have three playoff games. The following Saturday has four playoff games. I expect our usuals like Frisco, First Responder, Camellia, Mobile, NOLA will become midweek games if they make it long term. Wouldn't be surprised to see some bowls played between January 2nd and January 18 next year to keep the hype up for the playoff.

Not much love for free market capitalism here. The NCAA used to keep the number of bowl games under a tight cap and it wasn't unusual for some teams with a lot of wins to miss out. 1975 11-0 Arkansas State, as well as runner up 8-2 La Tech. MVC Champ 7-4 Tulsa, MAC had champ in bowl but not 9-2 Ball State, 8-2-1 Central Michigan, and 8-3 Bowling Green. The PCAC (Big West) had champ SJSU out at 9-2, nor Long Beach at 9-2, nor 8-3 SDSU. in the Pac-8 8-3 and ranked Cal missed a bowl but 7-4 USC made one. 8-3 ECU and App State in the Southern missed bowls. 9-2 Arizona missed a bowl game. 9-2 Rutgers, 8-3 Notre Dame, and 8-3 Virginia Tech left out. Imagine what happened in recruiting afterward, left out of a bowl then you bump up against a 7 win South Carolina, NC State or USC that made a bowl. No shot at winning what was already a tough recruiting battle. Go up against a school that was in a league with a bowl tie and you didn't have one? Good luck again. Fast forward to 1985. Left out was 8-2-1 Miami (OH) and 8-4 Utah (played at Hawaii). Few extra bowls helped out. 1995 Well Miami (OH) misses at 8-2-1 despite beating Big Ten champion Northwestern on the road. No one else with 8 misses but it didn't hurt that Alabama and Miami (FL) were under bowl bans. People interested in hosting bowl games had finally said the magic words. Antitrust violation and the NCAA rolled over. In my perfect world, bowl eligibility comes down to this. No team with 6 wins can be invited until every team with 7 or more is placed and no team with less than six until every team with 6 or more is placed. After that let the markets determine if we have too many bowl games. Haven't been many games fold in recent years. I do expect some to close up thanks to the playoff but if someone is willing to pay to show the game who really cares? If you have an antenna you've seen some of the junk channels like Grit and Cozi that sometimes show up in the basic satellite, cable, streaming packages. They run long annoying ads for stuff you'd probably never buy but someone obviously does buy or the commercials would go away. I'll watch 5th place CUSA vs 6th place MAC if I'm in the mood to watch football and that's the best game available.

I say Memphis State because I grew up with it being Memphis State. Never understood the passion to drop state off a name, in my experience I think it adds flair. I understand wanting to change SW Texas State to Texas State. One time in a shop in Little Rock was looking at all the sports stuff, clerk asked if he could help. Said I'm looking for something more than just Arkansas. Oh like what? Arkansas State. Three schools were on our hate list. Memphis State, Loser Tech, and SW Louisiana. Utterly indifferent to La Tech now but I might just take a 2-10 season if the wins were over Louisiana and Memphis. I'd call em West Tennessee Teachers but too long to be fun.

Word has been that a private equity firm is standing by to hand them the money in exchange for a percentage of revenue.

And reality is in 2024 for a married couple filing jointly the standard deduction is $29,200 not a lot of people hit that. I owe $50,000 on a 2.125% mortgage. Median household income in Texas was $102,500. Unless that median household has 29% of their income tied up in deductions itemizing makes no sense. Hell 2019 I had $13,000 in out-of-pocket medical when I was in cancer treatment (quit counting Blue Cross's outlay when it topped $100,000) and I still couldn't itemize. Person with real money wanting to fund players is going to work through a collective or other entity to hire the player to do some insta or TikTok posts for an inflated price to promote their business and have a shot at deducting as a business expense. Of course a publicly trader won't go above real value and closely held won't unless they feel certain no shareholder will challenge. I'm not a fan of the NIL collective tip jar system, I mean I contribute to A-State's collective, I just don't like the system. Really needs to be paid via the school and have a collective bargaining agreement.

They swung and missed trying to land the Grizzlies from Vancouver. Birmingham bought thousands of tickets from UAB for years and years. UNLV pays something like a million a year to rent Raiders stadium but the stadium pays UNLV like two million to keep Sam Boyd Stadium closed (why merged USFL/XFL won't have a team in Las Vegas, there is no acceptable venue. USC has a 99 year lease on LA Coliseum and the land the LAFC soccer stadium is on. LAFC owns the stadium but leases the land and parking lots from USC so USC's $1.3 million a year lease isn't a bad deal at all.

I'd not take the risk but then like most Americans I don't have enough itemized deductions to worry about it.

It's a wash. Liberty Bowl renovations have been kicked down the road many times because you do too much and ADA compliance starts kicking in on some issues grandfathered in. It's a big molded piece of concrete and renovations aren't cheap, especially to comply with accessibility issues. In the long run, it's a good deal because the city wants to preserve the Liberty Bowl game and more needs to be done than the city could justify. Getting donations wasn't really a big option for the city. First of all the city doesn't have a fund-raising staff to solicit donations and they don't have a donor list to work from. By turning it over to Memphis State they can solicit their fans to make up where the appropriation comes up short. The city and university for a long time were at cross purposes regarding the stadium. Memphis back in the 1970's was projected to explode the way Atlanta and Austin have and it didn't happen but basically from 1970 to 1995 Memphis was on any list of potential NFL expansion sites and in 1974 it was widely believed that had the WFL not put a team in Memphis that Memphis and Seattle would be the additions announced in 1974 for the 1976 season. Memphis nearly landed the Colts. So for years the city pursued NFL and what they needed the stadium to be for that didn't align with what the Tigers needed it to be. When Jacksonville and Charlotte got picked over Memphis, St. Louis and someone I can't remember, the NFL had talked to Memphis about a shared franchise. They asked Memphis if they'd be willing to move two to three home games a year to Nashville. Weren't happy but they talk with Nashville it's all warm and fuzzy then all of a sudden Nashville says not interested and pulls out of it and tells NFL they've no interest in working with Memphis despite not being a finalist for the expansion. Jacksonville and Carolina are announced and BOOM Adams announces he's moving the Oilers to Nashville. Once that happened Memphis accepted they are never getting in the NFL. That has changed the dynamic, there's no concern about making the stadium NFL ready, and best use is keep Liberty Bowl game vibrant while Memphis maximizes revenue at that site instead of having to buy land because they really don't have space for a stadium. So yeah long term it works well for everyone at least on paper.

You start tromping around and screwing with the NFL, you can have a problem. That's 32 billionaires and they swing a bigger stick than the Power 2. You are absolutely going to see guys opt to play college because they will be able to make more than NFL will pay. By the time you get a bit past middle of the second round, you are talking salaries that Texas, Michigan, Alabama, Ohio State can afford to pay. Colleges aren't going to be able to match a $200 million NFL payroll but a late third rounder like Demarion Oveshown is probably worth more to Texas than he is to the Cowboys and Texas can afford to guarantee more than $1.3 million over four years. No reason the Power 2 can't choose to keep guys around more than the old five to play four. Northern Illinois QB today was in his seventh season according to the announcers. I can see a professional Power 2 or Power 3 or Power 4 hollowing out the NFL talent after the first 50 picks or so.

NIL collective contributions aren't deductible. IRS already cut that off.

So we now have Florida State trying to break out of ACC, they've apparently been talking to a private equity firm to finance the hundreds of millions they will probably owe, they will give up a percentage of income for who knows how many years as part of the deal. Honestly at this point, it seems inevitable the Big Ten, SEC, maybe the Big XII are going to head to a straight up pay to play system. If I'm the NFL, I ask my 32 billionaire owners to call up the various senators and representatives they own uh sorry, donate to, in order knee cap professional college football. When a school is spending maybe 5% of its revenue on scholarships, one might wonder why donations to the richest athletic programs are tax deductible or why the government should provide financial aid to students when a program spends more than $100 million or $150 million on athletics.

The old system treated players as commodities. A sure first round NFL pick dominating player was priced identical to the 85th scholarship player on the roster who ended up playing senior day if and maybe a couple blowouts. A bushel of corn is a bushel of corn. New system is going to have glitches but should eventually become a market economy where being last scholarship player at Michigan pays very little over a scholarship and being a hoss gets you real money.

Sliding down a rabbit hole here, but this crap would be easier to swallow if this unregulated mess were more like soccer. Imagine every high school player in football and basketball signed a four year contract. Say $30,000 a year. Freshman year kid is AAC or Sun Belt player of the year. Texas Tech, OkSt, UCF want the kid. He wants to leave. UCF is offering $100,000 a year for the remaining three years. Has to pay 10% of the deal to buy his release. $30,000. Only played a year but buyout means played at no cost. Or maybe stud player from Plano gets $250,000 a year from Texas. He’s good not that good. Texas is stuck with him and he’s stuck on the bench but he likes coaches at UNT. Green say we will pay $75,000 a year. Texas is on the hook for $175,000 but Texas has leverage too. They tell him agree to cut salary to $100,000 and we will make up difference. Kid says nah make it $150,000 and we have a deal so kid is playing at UNT for $150,000 school only pays half. Meanwhile Arkansas offers a kid $50,000 because he’s a project. AState offers him that as well because he’s quality depth if nothing else. Hogs like what they see when he’s on campus but he’s a couple years from SEC ready. Hogs tell him we want you to get experience in games. Shop him around and agree to loan him to AState for a year at $15,000 Hogs pay the rest. Being able to profit from identifying talent and developing that talent changes the Charlie Brown I got a rock in my Halloween sack nature of how it works now.

The NCAA isn't spineless, it's toothless. The Association has been beat to hell by a string of antitrust lawsuit decisions going back 40 years. Basketball would likely have already had a privately run CFP style tournament had the NCAA not bought the NIT to stave off an inevitable loss to the NIT because of a stupid rule that said if you are invited to the NCAA Tournament and turn it down, you are ineligible for postseason. Incredibly obvious violation. Our courts are stacked pretty deep with judges who are skeptical of any sort of restraint on free markets and they are slapping the NCAA right and left. Absent Congress granted an antitrust exemption, genuine pay for play is coming and with it most likely a union and a collective bargaining agreement that sets minimum compensation standards that no one outside the P4 can afford and some in the P4 can't afford. If the NCAA and P4/5 gets slammed as bad as many expect in pending litigation ($4 billion is a possible verdict) its going to be insanity. You are going to see some of the P4 who can't just cough up their potentially as much as $58 million share of the verdict. They are going to turn to venture capital firms who are going to be willing throw hundreds of millions maybe billions at P4 athletic departments for a percentage of all future revenue. Imagine a bunch of schools selling their souls to venture capital and then being pressured to form a new conference that doesn't include those schools who take out more than they contribute. Sorry Mississippi State and Vandy we need your share of SEC revenue. This business got full on pro there won't be 69 Power 4 schools. College football isn't going to die. There are 772 four year colleges playing football, up four from last year with 11 more in the process off adding football. What is going to die is unpaid football at the schools in the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, and Big XII. Gee whiz schools in AAC, CUSA, MAC, MWC/P2, Sun Belt likely won't go play football at those schools for a million plus any more and won't be blessed with their top teams getting a crack at the P4 lower tier teams in a bowl. College football will live on.

Not exactly the same, no. But it's still about roster management. Figuring out how hard you are willing to go to keep a player, what you can afford, how to allocate what you can afford. Sign a high school kid, he can walk when he wants. Sign a kid who tore it up at Incarnate Word or Houston Baptist, he's stuck until he gets a diploma. High school coaches recruit by showing who they've placed at high Division I programs. Developing players that get a big pay day at OU or LSU ain't going to hurt recruiting.

I don't believe their numbers. I don't know if they are pulling them from an orifice or some "handlers" are self-reporting big numbers to get big numbers for other players they work.