It's time for The Mailbag, presented by Whitney McNutt of Tommy Morgan Inc. Realtors, Edition 196.
I asked for your questions. You delivered. So here we go...
From RebYell: I'd be interested in your short take on dual threat vs pocket passer QB's. All things equal, it seems like the "arm" is greater than the "leg". Which type do you think Kiffin would prefer? My guess is he'd prefer a hybrid, ie, a QB who stays primarily in the pocket but can scramble if need be, a la Matt Corral.
I don't think there's any doubt Kiffin would like to have a mobile quarterback who can make things happen with his feet, but he most definitely wants a pass-first signal-caller. He very clearly thought Matt Corral, for example, ran way too much last season. He worried about it throughout the season and those fears came to fruition when Corral was injured at Tennessee. Kiffin runs a pro-style offense, so my educated guess is he'd draw up a pro-style quarterback with a strong arm, a quick mind and feet good enough to extend plays if he could play the role of QB creator.
From um98rebl: Curious to get your thoughts on the student loan forgiveness? Full disclosure, I haven’t yet to listen to the Mind on My Money podcast with Martin Palomo of Pinnacle, although I will. Personally, I’m not a fan of blanket forgiveness. 1) It’s a horrible precedent,2) It’s insulting to those who paid their loans,3) The govt is still making the loans with very little oversight/input toward the prospects of individual earning enough to pay it back.Having said that, I would support some type of work based to program to,”pay off”/pay back their loans. Similar to that of the GI bill for military service in exchange for a college degree.I’m curious to hear your thoughts!Forgive me, if this was already discussed on the pod.
I agree with you. It's just pushing more debt on to our children and grandchildren. It's nothing more than a voter grab that appeals to people who don't understand money. It's an insult to those who made responsible decisions regarding education, in terms of deciding if college was right for them, what college was right for them and what field of study they pursued. And I agree with you regarding programs in exchange for funds for college.
From chattreb: One NIL possibility that I heard the other day, and you may have already discussed, is what will happen once the large Big Ten and SEC television checks come in, and the players in those conferences, who have yet to be told no, start demanding some of that action? Some say that requires organization, but when there is a lot of money involved clever people figure a way to get it. Basically, kind of like Trevor Lawrence led a players revolt to play in 2020, do you see the possibility of that happening in the same manor for the impending large amounts of TV revenue?
It is a matter of time before the players demand a chunk of the television/streaming pie. It is inevitable. How do the schools/conferences react? I don't know. However, that's coming, and everyone knows it. My guess is at some point, the players are declared employees, they unionize and things become regulated to some degree.
From DBROTC: I listened to the Brain Drain and Jay G. feels very confident that if Auburn wanted Lane Kiffin then they will get him. Assuming Ole Miss has an 8-4 or better season and Auburn has a record that gets Harsin fired, do you think Lane would go if courted? I understand that Auburn is the better job/program, but it just seems like Kiffin is a match made in heaven because Ole Miss let’s him run things his way. It’s his program. Unless Auburn’s power brokers get out of their own way like Alabama did when hiring Saban in ‘07, I think he stays even if courted hard. You have covered both programs so curious what you think.
Listen, I think Auburn would look at Kiffin and think about Kiffin, but I've said for a while it's a terrible fit. It just makes no sense. Auburn has a unique brand, and it's not going to make Kiffin its brand, and I think that's obviously important to Kiffin.
Auburn is historically the better program, but given the chaos there and some of the NIL issues there, I'm not sure that's necessarily the truth at this moment in time. At this moment, the power brokers at Auburn are making the job very difficult.
It can be a special job, but right now, it's a mess. Throw in the rivalries with Alabama and Georgia and look at where those programs are today and I'm just not sure how attractive that job is.
From philwauke: What are the long term effects on nil when you have a team like Tennessee paying a QB 8 million dollars? Will they go after a QB every year? Clearly he knows he's starting if they're paying him that much. Will it scare other qbs away? They can't pay a QB every year and keep everyone happy.
Everyone is watching that. Does it work? Does Nico Iamaleava turn Tennessee into a power and deliver a championship? If so, no one will blink at the money. But what if he's just an average player? What if he gets beaten out for the job? The people who raised that money won't be happy.
And yes, there will obviously be budgetary limits. Teams can't -- I wouldn't think -- drop massive NIL deals on multiple quarterbacks, for example.
From Levi275: Is Nebraska horribly coached or terribly unlucky? Per Dennis Dodd they’ve lost 12 straight games decided by single digits since 2020. There was a time when Frost was the hot candidate (pun not intended) but now he’s got 11 games to save his job.
Probably both. Or, and this is the tough one for Nebraska fans to accept and absorb, it could be that the program just can't accumulate the talent needed to win in the Big Ten. Maybe they're just short of the talent necessary to get over the top in those games. Sure, Frost has done some stupid stuff and he'll likely pay with his job at some point this fall, but it's hard to pin it all on him. The same guy won big at UCF. So he didn't forget to coach. The stage is bigger, the margin for error is smaller, and they're just not getting it done.
From randle4: On the Field Results (not off the field or character), is Mark Stoops to Kentucky, what James Franklin was to Vanderbilt? Stoops got the first 9 win regular season in 40 years at UK. He has 2 now (2018 and 2021). Now the expectation of a 8-4 season would be a disappointment.
That's interesting. It could be. I don't know all of the intricacies of the Kentucky program. I know Stoops has made Kentucky relevant and interesting and an opponent that must be taken seriously. Franklin did that at Vanderbilt for a few years, but I'd have to go back and really evaluate what was happening around the league at that time. I don't know that anyone could replicate that unless the league as a whole was way down for some reason or another. Kentucky, on the other hand, likely has the resources available to hire someone post-Stoops who could at least maintain the current level of success.
From 3YReb: How do you rank the SEC football stadiums based on the gameday experience and design appeal?
I don't know that I can rank them. I'm going to Kyle Field for the first time in October. It looks really cool on television.
All of the stadiums have their own appeal. Most are old and renovated and -- if we're being honest -- kind of clunky. Jordan-Hare at Auburn, Vaught-Hemingway, Tiger Stadium, Reynolds Razorbacks, Bryant-Denny, Sanford Stadium at Georgia, etc. They've all had add-ons and facelifts and such. All I see is the press accommodations. I have been to one college game as a regular person in the last 20 years (Mississippi State at Arkansas last November), so I don't know that I'm the guy to answer this.
I do like Commonwealth Stadium in Kentucky a lot for some reason. I've always thought Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge was cool. I used to love the press set-up at Auburn, but I haven't been since they moved the media basically out of the stadium.
I'm not sure I answered your question.
From Ole Myers: Neal the overall state of things scare the heck outta me. Im glad it’s football season so I’ll stop watching/reading the news. My question is broad. Should we realistically, as a society in general in America, embrace the beginning of the end or is it possible a true and honest (as possible) course correction could be achieved. The obvious signs are everywhere. But just like the quote from Shawshank Redemption (“remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”) about hope I do want to believe because I’m not negative person. I don’t believe elections are going to change things. I do not believe crazy young people are either or at least like it would if we stop being China’s biggest customer or literally eliminating fentanyl from the US.
Well, there's a lot there.
Are we at the beginning of the end as a nation? I don't think that's out of the question. We're still a relatively young nation, and right now, we're incredibly divided. And those divisions are becoming deeply personal. If that doesn't slow down, at the very least, I doubt the country stays intact another 250 years. I'm sure that will be interpreted as radical, but America is a mess right now.
That said, I do wonder if we're just going through a period of tumult right now. Trump's election really threw things off. His election very much upset the establishment, which includes the mainstream media. They went after him for four years, and he responded by being anything but presidential.
Then came Covid. Who knows who knew what and when, but by the mid-summer of 2020, I think anyone with a brain knew something was off. Now here we are, two-plus years later, and we have a remarkable set of facts in front of us.
We have a bad president who is essentially a puppet to the far left, a vice-president who is comically inept and a Democratic Congress that is fighting to move as much change through as possible while it remains in power. In the process, at least in my opinion, they're threatening to destroy the economy.
On the other side, the Republicans can't get out of their own way. A large segment of their base is still litigating the 2020 election and still wanting to run Trump again. That would be nothing short of a disaster for both the Republicans and the country. The Supreme Court picked this year of all years to get involved with Roe v. Wade (I can't remember the actual case; I apologize) and in so doing, took an issue that most Americans generally agree on and turned it into something super polarizing.
We need a bit of a reset. In an ideal world, Biden doesn't run again and the Democrats turn to someone less radical. In an ideal world, Trump doesn't run in 2024 and the Republicans run someone younger and less polarizing. Maybe that would cool the political climate a bit. Right now, there's no middle ground and we're creating a situation where our children will have less than we did.
Ultimately, that's who I worry about. I worry about our kids. I worry that this world of cancel culture and identity politics and the like is going to get even nastier. I worry about all of the massive debt we're putting on future generations. We're sending billions to Ukraine while many of our cities disintegrate. We're beholden to the Chinese, and they hate us. We have multiple crises ongoing but we're dedicating our energies, pardon the pun, to climate change. It's obscene, really.
But we're simply too extreme right now. Both sides of the political aisle are sprinting toward the edges, leaving very little in the middle. That's not sustainable.
Like you, however, I believe in this country and I have a lot of hope that we can cycle out of this era of radicalism and get back to something calmer and more conventional.
From REBNUT: What's the future of Tad Smith and the area around it?
You'd have to ask these guys when they're coming back for it. I have no idea.
In all seriousness, that's an Ole Miss question, and I just don't know anyone over there that isn't affiliated with athletics, and I haven't heard Tad Smith mentioned in years. I assume they'll leave it there and use it for camps and dance and office space and the like. Everyone says it would cost so much to tear it down. But I really don't know.
From jjglo23: First, love the OEP with you and Chase. It really gets me thru the day. Give me your take on the receivers we have. Is it hard to find a go to guy when a quarterback has not been named as a starter. Who would be that go to guy this season once we get going?
First, thank you. That's very kind.
As for the receivers, they have a bunch of guys who can be good, and they're hoping a couple emerge as dudes, frankly. I don't know that the quarterback situation is impacting that, to be honest. Jonathan Mingo has had a hard time staying healthy. Same for Jalen Knox. Malik Heath had a big camp. So did JJ Henry. They love Jaylon Robinson, but they need him to get tougher and play through pain, per sources. They really like Larry Simmons, but he's still a pup. They have some young guys who are inconsistent. They have some older guys (Dannis Jackson, for example) who show flashes but are inconsistent. Michael Trigg has all the ability in the world, but he has to refine his game.
So, in short, there's potential there. They just have to figure out how to maximize it.
