Light JOL Mailbag this week, but not surprising given the timing of the JOL TV show last week and the amount of questions we went through.
Is it better to have the first or last visit for a transfer?
KQ- In the portal world NIL is often king but if all things are equal you generally want the final visit. You will have a better idea on what you are defending against in terms of the other school's pitch, you will be fresh on the mind of the young person you are trying to get to commit and GT uses the 40-year plan and that mentality and that can often stick better after other schools don't make those types of pitches.
Are we likely to get an edge rusher before this portal ends? What happens if we don’t
KQ- Sometimes you have to take a breath and understand who is running the show. Brent Key has shown a tremendous ability to work the portal so far in his GT tenure. They got Romello Height, I wouldn't be shocked if they added another hybrid DE or pure rush guy as well. There is no rush to get guys committed at the moment. They can't enroll in school until June.
The conventional wisdom on this board and elsewhere is that the entire face of college football will look quite different in 5 years and that players will become employees, etc. However, there also seems to be a consensus opinion that the B1G and SEC have no motivation to give up the status quo of either their power or their money. How do you see this all shaking out? What is a plausible scenario you see where events could coalesce and bring about a new era in college football?
KQ- So I think no one really knows how this all plays out. I think in order to avoid the most amount of lawsuits and to keep from being sued until we are all dead they are going to have to deal in the ACC and Big XII teams in some manner whether that is absorbing more teams into the existing two big boys or some other form of league.
I think the Super League concept is what makes the most sense even if it gets tweaked along the way. I think ultimately the SEC and Big Ten are going to get sucked into a lot of lawsuits from ex-athletes and face threats of unionizing and other things over the next few years. The legal piece of all of this is the great equalizer and the thing all parties want to avoid because it is still a roll of the dice.
The other thing I'm sort of curious about is what happens with Clemson and FSU if they reach some sort of legal means to escape the ACC or just opt to buy themselves out and they pay $300-500 million a piece to get out and then that money gets spread out and come two years later the leagues decide to break off and form a super league? That is a crazy gamble in all of this as well and something none of the media are talking about. If the ACC gets absorbed or broken up over a new mega conference and everyone gets in, those two could be out nine figures of dead money for maybe a one or two-year jumpstart at best.
I think GT survives in all of this somehow, I just have no idea what it will look like right now. I doubt the status quo will reach the end of this decade though. I think the two primary TV partners ESPN and Fox can work out a deal like CBS and Fox have with the NFL and you can even do the same with ND and NBC to make the TV deals workable.
At the end of the day, I think no one wants to watch a 32-team Super League. That is just minor league football and Bama fans do not want to play at Nebraska, at USC and at Rutgers in a season. I doubt USC want to travel to UGA, Bama, or Texas every year either. Folks at Alabama are not going to enjoy going 8-5 in a 13-game schedule nor would UGA fans like that when they are used to winning 10 games a year and having some tune-up games and playing some shitball teams and regional games.
I also would expect lawsuits if the SEC and Big Ten move ahead and try to break off leaving others challenging the non-profit status they enjoy as well. You can't exactly create a tax haven in the Bahamas if you are a SEC team to avoid paying state and federal taxes if you lose your non-profit status and that would kill the donations as well that fuel the program.
We live in times where our government can barely and really doesn't function well so expecting equally stubborn people like Greg Sankey who are power-hungry politicians to do what is best for their sports is also not realistic either. However, I doubt ESPN and Fox want to lose all of the content and various channels they have from CFB, MBB, and other sports that go away or get neutered by a two-league super conference of under 60 teams.
Is there currently a curfew time for Sunday ACC baseball games.
KQ- Thanks to GT SID Andrew Clausen for an assist on this one. Baseball teams use different methods of travel like charter flights (GT at school X), charter buses (GT at Clemson) or commercial flights. Before the season the ACC takes all of the travel info for the teams and creates a last inning start time for the year based on the method of travel. If it is a charter bus or charter flight then they can keep going.
I forgot that teams fly commercial but I've flown with both Clemson and NC State a few different times out of Fort Lauderdale coming back from a Rivals Camp and I see all types of college teams in the Atlanta Airport so it is pretty common.
