He will need to be in the new landing spot for spring ball so no baseball. He’ll need to be enrolled full time to participate in spring ball

Well, beyond the obvious losses we'll face for being so successful...

What are some failing programs that will be shedding players? Guys that were marginal at the FBS level but would start at Davis?...and for that matter who are some top FCS guys that would like a Graduate Year in Davis playing for a legitimate Big Sky contender?

Pinnick isn’t growing. But how tall is he? Historically and recently the roster has been reasonably accurate with players measurements. A couple of our three star highschool recruits for 2025 shrunk by several inches in coming here. Pinnick is listed at 6’0”, has anyone stood near him or watched him play basketball?

Makes perfect sense.

Reading that 1/3 of the players in FBS are in the Portal right now.

I think if these guys are old enough to be paid big boy money they can be criticized for their decisions like big boys as well. The system is messed up, but this choice was still Caden's to make.

Fair enough

Can hear parents and coaches alike preaching to these young men, "Look, part of growing up is living with the consequences of your own decisions. Now you make a decision, but you live and die with the outcome, that's life."

UCLA? Seeing them hit hard

Absolutely UCLA.

The right kind of young men will be attracted to come to Davis for a couple of reasons:
1) The Degree
2) The Chance to Play Every Day

Honestly, I think we play at a pretty high level of football. We aren't playing in the Horseshoe or nothing, but a lot of NFL players are on these rosters that Davis plays every year, and that includes those FBS games that will become more prevalent as the upgrades and transition draw nearer.

There will be a lot of non contributors moving from FBS to wherever they can due to the roster size limit, Teams are going to be cutting walk-ons and just have scholarship players on the roster. There can be some wheat among the chaff, like Eli Simonson. Challenge is evaluating someone who hasn’t played.

Just because they enter the portal, doesn't mean they transfer.

Unfortunately for Davis fans, in Pinnick's (and maybe Vargas') case the money might be too good to pass up.

If the terms involve giving up baseball, I'm interested in hearing the thought process (I still don't know how good a baseball player he is). 1-3 round MLB draft money can be nice if he sticks at Davis.

If another school had offered me $450,000-$1,000,000 to take my Liberal Arts talents to another university, I'd be gone in a heartbeat. I'd never villainize these guys.

Knowing other coaches is huge as well - networking in the off-season getting phone calls from so-and-so at Nebraska and saying, "I got this kid Eli Simonson, he's a solid tackle, but I can't get him on the field and he's buried at 3rd on the depth chart. He can play for you, I know he can."

3 year starter, 1st Team all Big Sky.

athletes were not historically villains or victims. The villains were power conferences and cable tv monopolies in their probably unconstitutional overvaluation. The victims were cable subscribers and all the non-athlete students subsidizing the excess. Now the athletes have joined the SEC and Comcast in the circlejerk. They were never exploited in real terms, maybe just in comparison to what the conferences were getting. But yeah, the athletes joined the villain problem.

I think CFB could now be living through consequences of recruiting covid-era high school kids. They're just now phasing through the college ranks. I mean zooming into class, cheating on your tests with ChatGPT and graduating HS probably doesn't help the schools resonate with kids on "come here, play ball and graduate because your degree will actually mean something to you down the road"

the irony is they are graduating into a work world hesitating to hire college educated knowledge workers because shareholders think the same chatGPT they used to cheat might just be able to replace them. It is a difficult time for people trying to get on the corporate ladder.

So true. Lots of factors pressuring kids into making short-term bets at the cost of long-term success. I hope the ship rights quickly.

Shamburger has offers from Tennessee Tech and Tarleton State

Wow. 1/3 of FBS. On top of 12-15k names left in the portal from last year. This deal is a disaster, I could not imagine being a coach at a place like Davis without an entire front office to sort through all this. Would be interested to know how they do it. A lot of it is from friends in the profession (trying to help kids they’re cutting to find a soft landing) but it is brutal. And they’re starting on their ‘27 class by now!

UCLA is a mess. There will be a bunch of free agents looking for $ but maybe a few kids that still value a UC education. There will be a bunch of kids from Virginia and the South heading there once Coach gets his baring a straight.

I miss the old days

The question is do we get an experienced portal QB or go with the young buck because our roster otherwise is win now ready.

I feel like it's gotta be roll with the young bucks because Plough's system is difficult to master at a championship level with only a spring and fall camp under the belt.

I see where you're coming from. My thing is and I say this without having really watched our younger QBs, would going with one of them deter an older guy on our squad with one year who wants to win now(while also probably being offered a little more than what we can offer money wise) from staying.

[ We don’t have an older guy on the squad, assuming Rasor is leaving, He was the only upperclassman, in terms of academic year. He probably is only a redshirt sophomore in terms of eligibility.

Some interesting tweets from Plough:

Brett Kavanaugh might have messed up next year for me :naughty:

Davis is pretty honest with guys so odds are if you are in the portal you have made your decision. Some of these kids are being offered more dough than their parents/guardians have made over the course of their entire lives. In a lot of these situations it’s not the kid making the call.

UCLA isn’t really the profile except for the Jayce Smalley type of grad transfer. Those kids are on rev share. The good ones will get rev share elsewhere. Those that can’t get a new deal are generally not good enough or driven enough to play at Davis, either. The good fits have been the kids from academic minded lower level schools and Cali kids from other FCS programs. Expect that to remain the case going forward.

there are quite a few players whose heights aren’t accurate. But CP is pretty close to 6ft

and how does a player of a single parent who struggled to bring them up pass up that type of money. Many players earn more in NIL than they will when the complete school. It really is a messed up system