LouisEly

Have a loaner while my vehicle is in the shop. It's the redesigned 2025 model of my 2019 Nautilus, wanted to get a chance to test drive one and see what it's like as I don't particularly care for the new body shape/style which makes it look more and more like a station wagon. No native navigation system, have to use Android Auto. Ugh. I HATE Android Auto, specifically Google Maps. They do an absolutely TERRIBLE job with street names. First, you can't read them - black text on a gray road, yeah, great contrast there. Second, they letters are too damn small. Third, they never use names for roads that are also highways. Yeah, NOBODY refers to Colorado Boulevard as Hwy 2. And then fourth, I have to acknowledge Incognito mode whenever I start the vehicle. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. On top of that, it runs on your phone, so how much data is it going to use? If I have to get an unlimited data plan, that's an extra $30/month. Useless. Meanwhile, Google is laying off UX researchers. Great idea.

Yeah, but freedom of speech/expression/or whatever they think their rights are to do whatever they want!!!

It's not just the injuries. It's that even after he came back they couldn't/didn't start him on four days rest. Only once in 2025 did he start a game on fewer than five days rest, and that was his seventh start. And the one time they did start him on less than five days rest they only let him go four innings and 65 pitches. Again, that was his seventh start - he should have been stretched out and able to go longer than that. They had to manipulate their rotation with the off days and bringing guys up for spot starts for him to try to get through the season, and even then they weren't successful. When you have a bunch of days off you can manipulate a rotation, when you get an extra arm on the staff in September you can manipulate a rotation, but you cannot manipulate a rotation for an entire season. Add to that he'll be 33 next year and I do not see anyone giving him a multi-year deal or an 8-figure deal.

All his statement is designed to do is to calm the players down and try to stem the tide of them looking elsewhere. It really means nothing else. Unless I'm missing something, all firing Fickell right now instead of at the end of the season does is give players the opportunity to enter the portal right now and have more time to find another school.

I think teams are well aware of how careful the Brewers were with Woody this season with pitch counts, how many times they let him get up and down, manipulating their rotation so that he could be pushed back a day or two after a lot of pitches, etc.. Add to that the lat injury that shut him down for the rest of the season and you have a guy who over the last three seasons has started a total of 23 games and pitched a total of 131 innings and finished each of the last three seasons on IR. Put all of that together and I would be shocked if anybody gives him eight figures.

It would be nice if the networks stopped covering politics nonstop and actually covered some real news like this.

Whatever the Broncos hurry up offense is, I want Love and MLF taking notes.

Bring back Phil Longo

Except that Alvarez is the reason that Mac is there in the first place.

The right guy can probably bring as many recruits with him as they would lose.

Agreed. And the earlier in the season they fire him, the more time it gives recruits and current players to look around and find another school. If I were the AD, I would already have outside attorneys contacting attorneys for candidates and drafting NDAs. Once the NDAs are in place, then have preliminary discussions to gauge interest and salary requirements. Once they have at least 3 candidates who are seriously interested who they like, then they can move forward with the process. Given that it's a state job, there are state laws that have to be followed regarding posting the job. I would fire him as late in the season such that they can meet the mandatory minimums for posting the job while being able to announce the new head coach the Monday after Thanksgiving. When they fire him, they can tell the team and the recruits that they have someone in place but legally can't announce it until the Monday after Thanksgiving.

With the second injury that ended his season, and with the way the Brewers carefully used him during the season, I don't see anybody giving Woody more than 1/$5M, much less a multi-year deal.

1) Freddy or Woody 2) Priester 3) Patrick 4) Miz 5/6/7) Henderson/Gasser/Myers 8) Hall 9) Hunt/Crow/Kuehner/Wichrowski/Harden One of Freddy and Woody will be back, one won't. Woody will come cheap - nobody's giving him a multi-year deal. Dark horse - they keep both Freddy and Woody and trade three of 5-9 in a blockbuster trade.

Up yours too, Dodgers fans

Win or lose tonight, I'm going to enjoy it. Cheers to a great season. Exceeded my expectations. Now, down the hatch. (And up yours, Cubs fans.)

My issue is that they have to do something to stop the ability to create these "super teams". Elimination of deferred compensation (at least, forcing it to count against the cap while the player is playing) and hard penalties for going over the luxury tax are a good start. Revenue sharing will be needed, but have to have real penalties for going over the luxury tax. If the owners want to get the fans on their side, they first need to start doing what some franchises have done - concession prices for the every-day person. $2 sodas/hot dogs/popcorn, $5 brats/burgers/basket of fries, etc. If fast food restaurants can make a profit at those prices, so can teams. At the worst, they have to look at basic concessions as loss-leaders. Charge a premium for premium food and premium alcohol that wealthy fans won't care about paying for. Once they get the fans more on their side from a cost to attend standpoint, then they can lockout.

Certainly possible. But lots of kids hit the portal because they think they're good enough to start somewhere, and plenty of kids may see it as an opportunity to not have to wait three years to play.

We'll see how well he does after someone poaches Mike Shanahan. Or if they can't get another top 5 transfer portal QB. Something tells me that he wouldn't have been as successful with Phil Longo or Joe Rudolph as OC, or with Braedyn Locke or Hunter Simmons as QB.

This is exactly what you said: You didn't say anything about what their conference record was their first two seasons. All you said was that they "got progressively worse the first three years of a coach's tenure and then became really good in year 4, 5, 6." I gave you exactly that with Butch Davis at Miami.

And year three they were flying banners over the stadium saying, "From national champs to national chumps".

Off the top of my head: Vinny Anthony Jack Nelson (remember how bad he was until his senior year?) Preston Zachman Joe Brunner Tanor Bortolini (who was forced to move to center due to lack of center depth) (Mahlman is not a NFL left tackle, but was considered a NFL prospect at right tackle) Now, that may not seem like a lot, but can you tell me how many scholarship players are left from the 2022 team? (Hint: you don't need all of your fingers and toes. You don't even need all of your hands and feet.)

Butch Davis at Miami.

Basically, almost everything internally and externally has gone wrong. 1) Fickell had good assistants at Cincinnati, but they were too good - they were offered by ND to be their head coach and he brought Cincinnati's OC to be their OC (and ND undoubtedly pays their coordinators more than UW does). So, unlike some head coaching hires he wasn't able to bring his coordinators with him. 2) Fickell didn't hire good coordinators in Longo and Tressel. They brought in some position coaches that were bad hires (Bicknell), and some hires were too good (safety coach got poached by Miami, DL coach got poached by Michigan in lateral moves). 3) Chryst's last two recruiting classes were a half-hearted effort at best. He only brought in 6 OL total in his last three classes, only 3 DL, and the QBs in his last three classes (Cole Lacrue, Myles Burkett, Deacon Hill, and nobody in 2020) aren't on any P-4 teams if not even FBS. The talent cupboard was bare - not much was left to develop. They were already headed to this level before Fickell took over. 4) The starting QBs they brought in all three years have been injured. Most schools, if forced to play their backup QB, will struggle on offense. 5) We don't know how much they have in NIL - anything public is pure conjecture - but we do know that QBs are expensive, and because they've had to bring in QBs every year we don't know how much they have left after paying the QBs. We also know that they lost their star young CB Xavier Lucas to higher NIL at Miami. (On that note, someone at Indiana ponied up $1.6M for Mendoza, the #4 ranked QB in the portal. Larry Ellison's sugar baby convinced him to pony up $10M for Underwood, the #1 QB recruit. Someone at UCLA ponied up $1.2M for Iamaleava, the #1 ranked QB in the portal. The Varsity Collective was only willing/able to pony up $750K for Edwards.) 5b) We also know that the Chancellor required the athletic department to "play by the book" with regards to NIL. Kids were required to be on campus before a dollar of NIL was paid.. Other schools were giving kids checks up front when they committed.

Kevin Heywood was supposed to be the starting LT but is out for the season. Emerson Mandell is starting at RT. Tucker Ashcraft is the starting TE but has been injured. Trech Kekahuna is a starting WR. Eugene Hilton is #5 in WR snaps. Mason Posa has become the #3 ILB and Cooper Catalano has become the #4 ILB. Omillo Agard started at CB last week. Grant Stec has been their #3 TE, Dillan Johnson is in the rotation at DT.

The problem is that it takes at least three years to do that. Fickell is on year three, and his recruiting classes (which have been very good) are true freshmen and redshirt freshmen/true sophomores. Very few players are left from 3-4 years ago. Chryst's last two recruiting classes were a half-hearted effort at best. He only brought in 6 OL total in his last three classes, only 3 DL, and the QBs in his last three classes (Cole Lacrue, Myles Burkett, Deacon Hill, and nobody in 2020) aren't on any P-4 teams if not even FBS. The transfers brought in were mostly seniors and gone after a year or two.