All Hokie, All the Time. Period. Presented by First Bank & Trust Company

Synaesthesia

S
5,474
Posts
0
Threads
2,197
Likes
Member since: July 25, 2008
Last post: 05/07/2022 05:09 AM ET

Posting History (477)

SC reportedly lost the NIL battle to VT for Keylen Adams last summer

Like that was a whole big thing, their fans couldn't believe that a 4 star WR would flip from South Carolina to Virginia Tech when Tech was coming off such a bad year prior. The word going around from connected SC people is that VT's NIL program was more advanced and VT was simply willing to pay more for a 4 star player than SC was (as in, SC's budget constraints meant they had to use it on players a smaller number of presumably higher-impact players).

They do have legal language against this, enforced against team not players

Basically, you can't have the pro sports equivalent of bagmen conspire together to try to come up with a way to highly compensate players in such a way as to circumvent the salary cap. The finer points of this, like how is fair market value determined so you can decide whether something is in excess of that, well that would get sussed out in court. And obviously there's some level of wiggle room, everyone knows there's more external endorsements to be had playing sports in Los Angeles than in Buffalo. But, the important part is they go mostly go after the team for this, not the individual player. Joe Smith and the Timberwolves is a good real-life example of attempted salary cap evasion and fallout. Smith got only indirectly punished because of the specifics of how the (Larry) Bird Rights work in the NBA.

NIL cap would get instantly vaporized by the courts, as it stands now

The salary cap is what you need after you have players getting paid directly, as part of a labor union, where they sign contracts to play for a school's program for X many years. But they'll never put a cap on what's effectively endorsements, the precedent of "you're only allowed to make this much money per year if you're famous" would create too much judicial ripple effect elsewhere. The real problem is the lack of binding contracts that force a player to stay on a particular team no matter who's endorsing them or how much. Like, State Farm can spend millions of dollars on putting Patrick Mahomes in their commercials, but they can't force him to stay in Kansas City.

The NCAA is powerless to act, that's the whole thing

Their business model is so screwed up that they lost 9-0 at the Supreme Court. Like seriously, think about that, THIS court unanimously sided with labor. How many other unanimous pro-labor decisions have they come up with? The previous paradigm is cooked, done for, 100%. All of this thrashing around is trying to find a new quiescent point to operate at. If you ask me, it's going to be the pro model, paid players, collective bargaining for labor to get the antitrust exemption, etc. It's just going to take some time to get there. But, in the future it's going to be like a 2-sentence summary in the history books, the Alston decision in 2021, the new system in 2027 or whatever year it happens.

The Lounge 2 y ago

I think it would probably take too many bollards to stop a ship that size

That freighter was in a class among the heaviest ships in the world, even if it's drifting very slowly with no power, it's a huge amount of energy that needs to be dissipated. Maybe a really large field of bollards could do it, but then the complaints are going to be that it's hurting commerce and the value of the shipping port too much, because the size of the bollard fields is reducing the "bandwidth" of how many ships can simultaneously pass through that area at any one time. Even a slight reduction in the number of ships that can be processed per day or week or whatever will have moneyed interests howling in anguish.

I'll say 2021

Putting the psychological effect of covid aside, that was a year that the depth chart looked like everything was lining up for VT to have a good season. You knew UNC was a home game right off the bat and they were going to be highly ranked, you knew you were getting ND at home too. And once the schedule was revealed, it was like perfect, you had all the most difficult games of the season early (less time for injuries to pile up), and UNC/WVU/ND all had easy games in between, there weren't 2 consecutive hard games to find. 2021 is a real 'what might have been' kind of year to me. What if VT pulls off the comeback at WVU (or doesn't start the game flat), what if the ND game doesn't slip away on a time-expiring field goal? In the offseason, the Miami game late in the year would've looked tough, but they were barely a .500 team by the time the game was played. If VT hadn't lost that ND game, would they have have mailed in those other games?

That was last year's reported value for him on On3

Now, what's On3's methodology? Self-reported? Estimates/hearsay? Don't know. But that's their hook, the only place (for now) that will show you a number of some kind.

Yet another VT game ending in a blowout result

Haven't played a truly close game since September (the NC State game was obviously not as close as the final score looked)

The expanded field is going to fix most of it

There will still be discussions about snubs of who was 12 vs 13, but, realistically, those are going to be more like bubble teams getting snubbed from being a 15 seed in the basketball tournament. Most years, teams down around 12th have at least 2 losses, maybe even 3. Their appearances will be more like a reward than a reflection of future expectations. Yes it's possible they could win a game, but it's vanishingly small likelihood that they win the whole tournament. However, it's not a stretch to think that Florida State, Georgia, or Ohio State could've ended up winning the national title this year if they were in the field. Florida State didn't lose any games, Georgia and Ohio State were 1 scoring possession removed from undefeated.

Only salary cap, players union, etc. is going to be able to rein it in

Sometimes I see the idea out there that programs and donors will cut back on their spending after seeing themselves and others get burned by dropping so much money into players that didn't plan out, but the entire realm of human history begs to differ. Everyone thinks they're 1 coach away, 1 QB away, 1 poker hand away, all they need is 1 big break and it could be right around that corner. They're Tobias Funke saying it never works for them and they're delusional, but it might work for us.

Hard to believe they'll spend so much money just to get former regime guy

Would be like firing Fuente just so you can give Galen Scott a chance at the helm, but 10x more expensive

If you liked this year's improvement, make sure to pay into NIL programs

Most of the enhanced production on offense and defense was made by players who weren't here last year, who transferred in. To keep improving, they need even more and better players, from their current and future recruiting classes, from the transfer portal. People can bemoan the idea of paying for players, but it's never going away, and it's only going to get more direct in the future. VT may not be willing or able to outspend Georgia or Ohio State for consensus 5-stars and future #1 NFL picks, but they've been willing to outspend midrange ACC and SEC teams for the type of solid 4-star players who were the backbone of Beamer's fantastic run. So, if you want more guys like Drones, Tuten, Delane, APR, it's going to cost money.

Hoping it's for a 7-5 or 8-4 team from a power conference

Since the October turnaround, VT's 3 losses came to the 3 teams who were far and away the best teams in the conference, teams who were a combined 31-3. But, their 5 conference wins came against teams who finished in the bottom 5 of the conference (although some of that is because VT won in the first place, like VT was 5-3, BC was 3-5, so the difference in records is literally just the result of the head-to-head). Even though it might result in a 6-7 finish, I'd like to see what VT can do against a team that looks like it should be an even matchup. VT pretty much demolished all the ACC teams worse than them, but got crunched against better teams, there were pretty much no 50/50 results.

Like Khalil Herbert, wish he could've played for VT in a different year

Both of them had enormous contributions in their respective years, but I would've loved to see what they could've done if they had been able to play on VT's better teams

6-6, 5-3 since Oct, the 3 losses to teams who are combined 29-5 (20-3 ACC)

That's a pretty solid spot to be for the 2nd year of a rebuild. A lot of teams rebuilding after a coaching change, their 2nd year doesn't have any improvement in the win total yet.