Assistant Regional Manager

Sark’s past never involved legal trouble or a mugshot. The bar for being a head coach at Texas is to not put yourself in a position where you could possibly be arrested the morning of a game. Is that asking for too much? Congrats to him that the fiancé didn’t want to cooperate which forced the charges to be dropped.

Will Wade and Chris Jans would be no-brainers in my mind, but both carry baggage that make me doubt if they would ever be considered here.

Nothing fires me up more than a college assistant with no head coaching experience whose reputation is built largely off recruiting. Maybe it works out for Miami but that job must not be super desirable less than 2 years removed from a final four if that is who they are picking.

Gerry has said for at least a month that he may not be as high on the board as other people claim he is.

LSU reportedly planning to bring back McMahon for a fourth season and increase NIL. Apparently they have the second lowest NIL budget in the SEC behind South Carolina at just under $2 million per year. No coincidence OU, LSU and South Carolina have the lowest NIL budgets in the conference and are the bottom 3 teams in the standings.

At Kansas State.

Correct. And Aschenbeck had 10 saves last year. Riojas may not be the typical 1-inning closer but if he is available to get the last 6-9 outs he will be out there a lot.

Guys, we have a closer. It’s Ruger Riojas and he’s good. He just ran out of gas last night trying to go 3 innings and it’s game 1 so they aren’t going to ask him to be a hero. Spencer and Riojas looking that good against a solid opponent bodes very well for the rest of the year.

They are far and away the most talented team in the country. The new coach should be able to just roll the ball out there and win most nights. Does it result in a SEC title? Who knows, but they are deservedly preseason #1. Next year is when the rollercoaster will start.

It was time to move on. As stated above, he went 7 years without a second-weekend appearance, and some of those tournament appearances he did have during that stretch were ugly (scoring 48 points in the first-round game against Butler in 2015). Just because a coach is successful after he leaves or the replacement isn't successful doesn't mean letting him go was the wrong choice.

Missed the first 2 games of the season then built up from there. Averaged about 10 minutes a game against the bad non conference opponents.

His victory against Alabama a few weeks ago was his first ranked road win since.....2021 against Texas when he was at Tech.

We have no idea what he is bringing. For all we know, he could be the designated donut pick-up guy for meetings. We also thought Brennan Marion would bring Go-Go offense stuff to Sark's system and we didn't see a damn thing. I know we will spend this entire offseason trying to spin every move into an "oh, this is for x in the red zone," but that is not how the majority of these analysts' hires work. Some guys will spend time scouting upcoming opponents, some will spend time self-scouting, some won't even have a headset on gameday. It's impossible to know what an analyst's role is going to be 12 hours after he is hired outside of wishcasting.

He has never called plays in his career and was a TE/fullbacks coach. I don't see this as anything more than a normal analyst coming on board.

Ole Miss and LSU had NET rankings in the 90’s. That is basically an automatic disqualifier for any team wanting an at large berth. Mississippi State was 31st. Texas is currently 32nd.

I think the important part of the remaining schedule is all the road games are fairly manageable (by SEC standards) and pretty much every road game in this conference is a Q1 opportunity. You steal a couple of those and you are sitting pretty.

Arkansas may be the worst team in the league and we still get them twice + OU at home who we’ve owned. It would be a pretty big collapse to not get to 7 wins. If we get to 8 conference wins, that probably means 6 or 7 Q1 wins which combined with our strong NET will have us in easily. Probably a seed or two higher than some may expect. The fact we were very competitive against Tennessee and Auburn in losses actually slightly improved our NET ranking.

I don’t get the people who are that high on Nico. Maybe he takes a big step but I was not impressed this year.

Whether you like it or not, this sport now operates with a de facto salary cap. You can't pay up for the #1 recruiting class and also pay up for 10 great portal players because you are worried about inexperience. It doesn't work both ways. You'll notice the schools who typically load up in the portal (Ole Miss, Tech, etc.) aren't also signing top 10 HS classes. If you just take a portal player at every spot you feel you are inexperienced at, you are basically flushing money down the toilet for all the guys at that position you invested in, some for multiple years as they developed as backups. Sure, there are certain spots where a portal guy is needed but just because you are losing your starting LG doesn't automatically mean you have to take one from the portal. What if the backup LG was making 300k the last 2 years? Are you cool with continuing to pay him back for a third year in a row and also paying a guy in the portal? Decisions have to be made about where to allocate resources and cost/benefit analysis has to be run at various spots. Guys don't play for free.

You wouldn't say this if you knew the payroll Texas was carrying into next year.

This isn't 2022 Texas anymore. The roster is in a much better spot and we don't have to be as reckless in the portal to try to backfill holes. Ohio State has taken 6 guys out of the portal, Georgia has taken 6 (really 5 plus the Branch brother who won't play there) and Texas has taken 4. Outside of DT, punter and kicker, pretty much every other positional need falls in the "would probably be nice to add someone" category. It would be nice if we could add another CB, it would be nice if we could add another quality TE, it would be nice if we could add another WR, it would be nice to add another RB. None of those are program-crippling needs, though, like in 2021 or 2022 when we looked at the roster and said, "holy crap, we are starting Ovie and Jett Bush at Edge with Casey Cain at receiver and Kitan Crawford at safety."

Didn’t you mention the other day you preferred Lincoln Riley to Sark? I’m assuming you are hoping he departs?

Can we please take 5 seconds to research the source of tweets before running to a message board with them

Also had a patented Tyrese Hunter turnover where he jumped in the air for no reason when we were holding for the final shot in a tie game.

A lot more freedom at private schools. No interference from the capitol.